The Wolf of Wall Street

^{CHAPTER 11} THE LAND OF RATHOLES

August 1993

(Four Months Earlier)

Where the fuck am I, for Chrissake?

Such was the first question that popped into my mind as I woke up to the unmistakable screech of landing gear being lowered from out of the enormous belly of a jumbo jetliner. Slowly regaining consciousness, I looked at the red and blue emblem on the seat back in front of me and tried to make sense of it all.

Apparently, the jumbo jetliner was a Boeing 747; my seat number was 2A, a window seat in first class, and at this particular moment, although my eyes were open, my chin was still tucked between my collarbones in sleep mode, and my head felt like it had been smacked by a pharmaceutical nightstick.

A hangover? I thought. From Quaaludes? That made no sense!

Still confused, I craned my neck and looked out the small oval window on my left and tried to get my bearings. The sun was just over the horizon—morning! An important clue! My spirits lifted. I panned my head and took in the view: rolling green mountains, a small gleaming city, a huge turquoise lake in the shape of a crescent, an enormous jet of water shooting up hundreds of feet in the air—breathtaking!

Wait a minute. What the fuck was I doing on a commercial plane? So tawdry it was! Where was my Gulfstream? How long had I been asleep? And how many Quaaludes—Oh, Christ! The Restorils!

A cloud of despair began rising up my brain stem. I had disregarded my doctor’s warning and mixed Restorils with Quaaludes, both of which were sleeping pills but from two competing classes. Taken separately, the results were predictable—six to eight hours of deep sleep. Taken together, the results were—what were the results?

I took a deep breath and fought down the negativity. Then it hit me—my plane was landing in Switzerland. Everything would end up fine! It was friendly territory! Neutral territory! Swiss territory! Full of things Swiss—velvety milk chocolate, deposed dictators, fine watches, hidden Nazi gold, numbered bank accounts, laundered money, bank secrecy laws, Swiss francs, Swiss Quaaludes! What a fabulous little country this was! And gorgeous from the air! Not a skyscraper in sight and thousands of tiny homes dotting the countryside in storybook fashion. And that geyser—unbelievable! Switzerland! They even had their own brand of Quaaludes, for Chrissake! Methasedils they were called, if memory served me correctly. I made a quick mental note to speak to the concierge about that.

Anyway, you had to love the Swiss—despite the fact that half the country was full of Frogs and the other half was full of Krauts. It was the end result of centuries of warfare and political backstabbing; the country had literally been divided in two, with the city of Geneva being Frog Central, where they spoke French, and the city of Zurich being Kraut Central, where they spoke German.

Insofar as my own humble Jewish opinion went, the Geneva-based Frogs were the ones to do business with—as opposed to the Zurich-based Krauts, who passed their time speaking disgusting glottal German while binge-drinking piss-warm beer and eating Wiener schnitzel until their stomachs bulged out like female kangaroos after a birthing cycle. And, besides, it didn’t take any great leap of logic to realize that there had to be a few Nazi bastards still hiding out among the populace, living off the gold fillings they’d forcibly extracted from my ancestors before they gassed them to death!

Anyway, there was an added benefit to doing business in French-speaking Geneva—namely, the women. Oh, yes! Unlike your average Zurich-based German woman, who was broad-shouldered and barrel-chested enough to play for the NFL, the average French woman—who roamed the streets of Geneva with shopping bags and poodles—was slender and gorgeous, in spite of her hairy armpits. With that thought, my smile broke through the surface; after all, my destination was none other than Geneva.

I turned from the window and looked to my right, and there was Danny Porush—sleeping. He had his mouth open, in fly-catching mode, while those enormous white teeth of his blazed away in the morning sunlight. On his left wrist he wore a thick gold Rolex watch with enough diamonds on the face to power an industrial laser. The gold gleamed and the diamonds twinkled, but neither was a match for his teeth, which were brighter than a supernova. He had on his ridiculous horn-rimmed glasses, the ones with the clear lenses in them. Unbelievable! Still a Jewish WASP—even on an international flight.

Seated just to his right was the trip’s organizer, self-proclaimed Swiss-banking expert Gary Kaminsky, who also happened to be the (slippery) Chief Financial Officer of Dollar Time Group, a publicly traded company of which I was the largest shareholder. Like Danny, Gary Kaminsky was sleeping. He wore a ridiculous salt-and-pepper toupee that was an entirely different color than his sideburns, which were ink black—apparently dyed that way by a colorist with a good sense of humor. Out of morbid curiosity (and habit), I took a moment to study his awful toupee. Probably a Sy Sperling special, if I had to take a guess; the good-old Hair Club for Men!

Just then, the stewardess walked by—ah, Franca! What a hot little Swiss number! So perky! She was gorgeous, especially the way her blond hair fell on that creamy white blouse with its high-necked collar. Such repressed sexuality! And that sexy pair of gold pilot’s wings she had pinned on her left jug—a stewardess! What a terrific breed of woman! Especially this one, with her tight red skirt and those silky black panty hose, such a wonderful swooshing sound they made as she passed by! Cut right through the landing gear and everything!

In fact, last I could recall I was striking up quite a rap with Franca, while we were still on the ground at Kennedy Airport in New York. She liked me. Perhaps there was still a chance. Tonight! Switzerland! Franca and me! How could I ever get caught in a country where mum’s the word? With a great smile and in a tone loud enough to cut through the mighty roar of the jet’s Pratt & Whitney engines, I said, “Franca, my love! Come here. Could I talk to you for a second?”

Franca turned on her heel and struck a pose, with her arms folded beneath her breasts, her shoulders thrown back, her back slightly arched, and her hips cocked in a display of contempt. That look she gave me! Those narrowed eyes…that clenched jaw…that scrunched-up nose…absolutely poisonous!

Well, that was a bit uncalled for. Why, the—

Before I could even finish my thought, the lovely Franca spun on her heel and walked away.

What happened to Swiss hospitality, for Chrissake? I had been told that all Swiss women were sluts. Or were those Swedish women? Hmmm…yes, on second thought it was Swedish women who were the sluts. Still—that didn’t give Franca the right to ignore me! I was a paying customer of Swissair, for crying out loud, and my ticket cost…well, it must’ve cost a fortune. And what had I gotten in return? A wider seat and a better meal? I had slept through the fucking meal!

All at once I felt the uncontrollable urge to urinate. I looked up at the seat-belt sign. Shit! It was already illuminated, but I couldn’t hold it in. I had a notoriously small bladder (drove the Duchess crazy), and I must’ve been asleep for a good seven hours. Oh, fuck it! What could they do to me if I got up? Arrest me for going to take a piss? I tried getting up—but I couldn’t.

I looked down. There wasn’t one but—Christ almighty!—there were four seat belts on me. I had been tied down! Ah … a practical joke! I turned my head to the right. “Porush,” I snapped loudly, “wake up and untie me, you asshole!”

No response. He just sat there with his head back and his mouth open, a gob of drool glistening in the morning sunlight.

Again, but louder this time: “Danny! Wake up, God damn it! Pooorussshhhhh! Wake up, you piece o’ shit, and untie me!”

Still nothing. I took a deep breath and slowly tilted my head back, then with a mighty thrust forward I head-butted him in the shoulder.

A second later Danny’s eyes popped open and his mouth snapped shut. He shook his head and looked at me through those ridiculous clear lenses. “What—what’s wrong? Whaddidya do now?”

“Whaddaya mean, whaddid I do now? Untie me—you piece o’ shit—before I rip those stupid glasses off your fucking head!”

With half a smile: “I can’t, or else they’re gonna Taser you!”

“What?” I said, confused. “What are you talking about? Who’s gonna Taser me?”

Danny took a deep breath and said in hushed tones, “Listen to me: We got some problems here. You went after Franca”—he motioned his chin in the direction of the shimmering blond stewardess—“somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. They almost turned the plane around, but I convinced them to tie you up instead and I promised that I’d keep you in your seat. But the Swiss police might be waiting at Customs. I think they plan on arresting you.”

I took a moment to search my short-term memory. I had none. With a sinking heart, I said, “I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about, Danny. I don’t remember anything. What did I do?”

Danny shrugged. “You were grabbing her tits and trying to stick your tongue down her throat. Nothing so terrible if we were in a different situation, but up here in the air…well, there’s different rules than back at the office. What really sucks, though, is that I think she actually liked you!” He shook his head and compressed his lips, as if to say, “You let a fine piece of pussy get away, Jordan!” Then he said, “But then you tried to lift up her little red skirt and she got offended.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “Why didn’t you stop me?”

“I tried, but you started going wild on me. What did you take?”

“Uhhhhh…I don’t know for sure,” I muttered. “I think maybe…uh, maybe three or four Ludes…and then…three of those little blue Restorils…and, uh…ummm—I don’t know—maybe a Xanax or two…and, maybe some morphine for my back. But the morphine and the Restoril were prescribed by a doctor, so it’s really not my fault.” I held on to that comforting thought as long as I could. But slowly the reality was sinking in. I leaned back in my comfortable first-class seat and tried to draw some power from it. Then all at once, panic: “Oh, shit—the Duchess! What if the Duchess finds out about this? I’m really screwed, Danny! What am I gonna say to her? If this hits the papers—oh, God, she’ll crucify me! All the apologies in the world won’t—” I couldn’t bear to finish the thought. I paused for a brief second, until a second wave of panic overtook me. “Oh, Jesus—the government! The whole reason for flying commercial was to be incognito! And now…an arrest in a foreign country! Oh, Christ! I’m gonna kill Dr. Edelson for giving me those pills! He knows I take Ludes”—desperately I looked for a doorstep to lay the blame at—“yet he still prescribed me sleeping pills! Christ, he’d prescribe me heroin for a fucking splinter if I fucking asked him to! What a fucking nightmare, Danny! What could be worse? An arrest in Switzerland—the money-laundering capital of the world! And we haven’t even laundered any money yet, and we’re already in trouble!” I started shaking my head gravely. “It’s a bad omen, Danny.

“Untie me,” I said. “I won’t get up.” All at once, a flash of inspiration: “Maybe I should go apologize to Franca, smooth things out with her? How much cash you have on you?”

Danny began untying me. “I have twenty grand, but I don’t think you should try talking to her. It’ll only make things worse. I’m pretty sure you got your hand in her underwear. Here, let me smell your fingers!”

“Shut up, Porush! Stop fucking around and keep untying me.”

Danny smiled. “Anyway, give me the rest of your Ludes to hold on to. Let me take them through Customs for you.”

I nodded and said a silent prayer that the Swiss government wouldn’t want any bad publicity to tarnish their reputation for discretion. Like a dog with a bone I held on to that thought for dear life, as we slowly made our descent into Geneva.

With my hat in my hand and my butt in a steel-gray chair, I said to the three Customs officials seated across from me, “I’m telling you, I don’t remember anything. I get very bad anxiety when I fly, and that’s why I took all those pills.” I pointed to the two vials resting on the gray metal desk between us. Thankfully, both vials contained my name on the label; under my present circumstances, this seemed to be the most important thing. As far as my Quaaludes were concerned, at this particular moment they were safely tucked away up Danny’s descending colon, which, I assumed, had passed safely through Customs by now.

The three Swiss Customs officials started jabbering away in some off-the-wall French dialect. They sounded like their mouths were full of rotten Swiss cheese. It was amazing—even as they spoke at near light speed, they somehow managed to keep their lips tight as snare drums and their jaws locked firmly into place.

I began scoping out the room. Was I in jail? There was no way to tell with the Swiss. Their faces were expressionless, as if they were mindless automatons going about their lives with the mundane precision of a Swiss clock, and all the while the room screamed out, “You have now entered the fucking Twilight Zone!” There were no windows…no pictures…no clocks…no telephones…no pencils…no pens…no paper…no lamps…no computers. There was nothing but four steel-gray chairs, a matching steel-gray desk, and a wilted fucking geranium, dying a slow death.

Christ! Should I demand to speak to the U.S. embassy? No—you fool! I was probably on some sort of watch list. I had to stay incognito. That was the goal—incognito.

I looked at the three officials. They were still jabbering away in French. One was holding the bottle of Restorils, another was holding my passport, and the third was scratching his weak Swiss chin, as if he were deciding my fate—or did he just have an itch?

Finally, the chin-scratching Swissman spoke: “You would please repeat your story to us again.”

You would? What was all this would bullshit? Why did these stupid Frogs insist on speaking in some bizarre form of the subjunctive? Everything was based on wishes, and everything was phrased in woulds and shoulds and coulds and mights and maybes. Why couldn’t they just demand that I repeat my story? But nooo! They only wished I would repeat my story! I took a deep breath—but before I began speaking, the door opened and a fourth Customs official entered the room. This Frog, I noticed, had captain’s bars on his shoulders.

In less than a minute the first three officials left the room, wearing the same blank expressions they had come in with. Now I was alone with the captain. He smiled a thin Frog smile at me, then took out a pack of Swiss cigarettes. He lit one up and started calmly blowing smoke rings. Then he did some sort of amazing trick with the smoke—letting a dense cloud of it escape his mouth and then sucking it up right through his own nose in two thick columns. Wow! Even in my current position I found it impressive. I mean, I had never even seen my father do that, and he wrote the book on smoking tricks! I would have to ask him about that if I ever made it out of this room alive.

Finally, after a few more smoke rings and a bit more nasal inhaling, the captain said, “Well, Mr. Belfort, I apologize for any inconvenience you would have suffered from this unfortunate misunderstanding. The stewardess has agreed not to press charges. So you are free to go. Your friends would be waiting for you outside, if you wish to follow me.”

Huh? Could it be that simple? Had the Swiss bankers bailed me out already? Just to speculate! The Wolf of Wall Street—bulletproof, once more!

My mind was relaxed now, free from panic, and it went roaring right back to Franca. I smiled innocently at my new Swiss friend and said, “Since you keep talking about wishes and such, what I would really wish is if somehow you could put me in touch with that stewardess from the plane.” I paused and offered him my Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing smile.

The captain’s face began to harden.

Oh, shit! I lifted my hands, palms facing him, and said, “Of course, only for the purposes of making a formal apology to the young blonde—I mean, the young lady—and perhaps to make some sort of financial restitution, if you know what I mean.” I fought the urge to wink.

The Frog cocked his head to one side and fixed me with a look that so much as said, “You are one demented bastard!” But all he said was, “We would wish you not to contact the stewardess while you are in Switzerland. Apparently she is…how would you say it in English…she is…”

“Traumatized?” I offered.

“Ah, yes—traumatized. This is the word we would use. We would wish that you please do not contact her under any circumstances. I have not the slightest doubt that you will find many desirable women in Switzerland if that is your goal. Apparently you have friends in the right places.” And with that, the Captain of Wishes personally escorted me through Customs, without so much as stamping my passport.

Unlike my plane flight, my limousine ride was quiet and uneventful. That was appropriate. After all, a bit of peace was a welcome respite from this morning’s chaos. My destination was the famed Hotel Le Richemond, purportedly one of the finest hotels in all of Switzerland. In fact, according to my Swiss-banking friends, Le Richemond was a most elegant establishment, a most refined establishment.

But upon my arrival I realized that refined and elegant were Swiss code words for depressing and dumpy. As I entered the lobby I noticed that the place was packed with antique Frog furniture, Louis the XIV, the doorman proudly informed me, from the mid 1700s. But to my discerning eyes, King Louis should have guillotined his interior decorator. There was a floral print on the worn carpeting, a sort of swirling pattern that a blind monkey might paint, if he became inspired to do so. The color scheme was unfamiliar to me too—a combination of dog-piss yellow and regurgitation pink. I was certain that the Frog in charge had spent a fortune on this crap, which, to a nouveau riche Jew like me, was exactly what it was: crap! I wanted new, and bright, and cheery!

Anyway, I took it in stride. I was indebted to my Swiss bankers, after all, so I figured the least I could do was pretend to appreciate their choice of accommodations. And at 16,000 francs per night, or $4,000 U.S., how bad could it be?

The hotel manager, a tall willowy Frog, checked me in and proudly gave me the lowdown of the hotel’s celebrity guest roster, which included none other than Michael Jackson. Fabulous! I thought. Now I hated the place for sure.

A few minutes later I found myself in the Presidential Suite—getting the grand tour from the manager. He was an affable-enough fellow, especially after I gave him his first dose of the Wolf of Wall Street, in the form of a 2,000-franc tip, as thanks for checking me in without alerting Interpol. As he left, he assured me that the finest Swiss prostitutes were merely a phone call away.

I walked over to the terrace and opened a pair of French doors that looked out over Lake Geneva. I watched the geyser in silent awe. It must’ve shot up three…four…no, five hundred feet in the air, at least! What had motivated them to build such a thing? I mean, it was beautiful, but why would they have the world’s tallest geyser in Switzerland?

Just then the phone rang. It was an odd ring: three short bursts, then absolute silence, three short bursts, then absolute silence. Fucking Frogs! Even their phones were annoying! God, how I missed America! Cheeseburgers with ketchup! Frosted Flakes! Barbecued chicken! I was scared to look at the room-service menu. Why was the rest of the world so backward, compared to America? And why did they call us Ugly Americans?

By now I had reached the phone—Jesus! What a sad piece of equipment. Must be an original prototype of some sort. It was off-white and looked like it belonged in the home of Fred and Wilma Flintstone!

I reached over and grabbed the ancient phone. “What’s going on, Dan?”

“Dan?” snapped the accusing Duchess.

“Oh, Nae! Hi, sweetie! How ya doing, love-bug? I thought it was Danny.”

“No, it’s your other wife. How was your flight?”

Oh, Jesus! Did she already know? She couldn’t! Or could she? The Duchess had a sixth sense for these sorts of things. But this was too quick, even for her! Or had there been an article? No—not enough time had lapsed between my groping episode and the next edition of the New York Post. Such a relief—but only for a thousandth of a second! Then, a terrible dark thought: Cable News Network! CNN! I had seen this sort of thing happen during the Gulf War. That bastard Ted Turner had some sort of crazy system worked out where he could report the news as it was actually happening, in real time! Maybe the stewardess had gone public!

“Hello!” sputtered the blond prosecutor. “Aren’t you gonna answer me?”

“Oh—it was uneventful. Just the way it should be. Know what I mean?”

A long pause.

Jesus! The Duchess was testing me, waiting for me to crack under the weight of her silence! She was devious, my wife! Maybe I should start laying the blame on Danny, in anticipation.

But then she said, “Oh, that’s good, sweetie. How was the service in first class? You meet any cute stewardesses on the plane? Come on, you can tell me! I won’t get jealous.” She giggled.

Unbelievable! Had I married the Amazing Kreskin? “No, no,” I replied, “they were nothing special. Germans, I think. One of them was big enough to kick my ass. Anyway, I slept most of the way. I even missed the meal.”

That seemed to sadden the Duchess. “Ohhhhh, that’s too bad, baby. You must be starving! How was it going through Customs—any problems?”

Jesus! I had to end this phone call instantly! “Pretty smooth, for the most part. A few questions—just typical stuff. Anyway, they didn’t even stamp my passport.” Then, a strategic subject change: “But more importantly, how’s little Channy doing?”

“Oh, she’s fine. But the baby nurse is driving me crazy! She never gets off the stupid phone. I think she might be calling Jamaica. Anyway, I found two marine biologists who’ll come to work for us full-time. They said they can get the algae out of the pond by lining the bottom with some type of bacteria. Whaddaya think?”

“How much?” I asked, not anxious to hear the response.

“Ninety thousand a year—for both of them. They’re a husband-and-wife team. They seem nice.”

“Okay, that sounds pretty reasonable. Where did you find—” Just then, a knock at the door. “Hold on a second, sweetie. It must be room service. I’ll be right back.” I put the phone down on the bed and walked over to the door and opened it—what the hell! I looked up…and up…and wow! A six-foot-tall black-skinned woman, at my own door! An Ethiopian, by the looks of her. My mind started racing. Such smooth young skin she had! Such a warm, lubricious smile! And what a set of legs! They were a mile long! Was I really that short? Well—whatever. She was gorgeous. And she also happened to be wearing a black minidress the size of a loincloth. “Can I help you?” I asked quizzically.

“Hello” was all she said.

My suspicions were confirmed. It was a black hooker straight from Ethiopia, who could only say hello and good-bye! My favorite! I motioned her into the room and led her over to the bed. She sat down. I sat down next to her. I slowly leaned back and put my right elbow on the bed and leaned my cheek on the palm of my hand—OH, FUCK! MY WIFE! THE DUCHESS! SHIT! I quickly put a forefinger to my lips and prayed that this woman understood the international sign language known to all hookers, which in this particular instance translated into: “Shut the fuck up, you whore! My wife’s on the phone, and if she hears a female voice in the room, I’m in deep shit and you’re not getting a tip!”

Thankfully, she nodded.

With that, I picked up the phone and explained to the Duchess that there was nothing worse in the world than cold eggs Benedict. She was sympathetic and told me that she loved me unconditionally. I hung on this word for all it was worth. Then I told her that I loved her too, and that I missed her and that I couldn’t live without her, all of which was true.

And just like that, a terrible wave of sadness came over me. How could I feel those things for my wife and still do the things I did? What was wrong with me? This wasn’t normal behavior for any man. Even for a man of power—no, especially for a man of power! It was one thing to have an occasional marital indiscretion; that was to be expected. But there had to be some line, and I…well, I chose not to finish the thought.

I took a deep breath and tried to drive the negativity out of my head, but it was difficult. I loved my wife. She was a good girl, despite breaking up my first marriage. But I was just as much to blame for that.

I felt like I was being driven to do things, not because I really wanted to do them but because they were expected of me. It was as if my life was a stage, and the Wolf of Wall Street was performing for the benefit of some imaginary audience, who judged my every move and hung on my every word.

It was a cruel insight into the very dysfunction of my own personality. I mean, had I really given a shit about Franca? She couldn’t hold a candle to my wife. And that French accent of hers—I’d take my wife’s Brooklyn accent any day! Yet even after I had come out of my blackout, I still asked the Customs officer for her phone number. Why? Because I thought it was something that the Wolf of Wall Street would be expected to do. How bizarre that was. And how sad too.

I looked over at the woman sitting next to me. Did she have any diseases? I wondered. No, she looked pretty healthy. Too healthy to be carrying the AIDS virus, right? Then again, she was from Africa…No, no way! AIDS was an old-fashioned disease: You had to earn it by sticking your dick in a hole it didn’t belong in. Besides, I never seemed to catch anything, so why should this time be any different?

She smiled at me, so I smiled back. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, thighs akimbo. So immodest! So incredibly sexy! That loincloth of hers was almost above her hips. This would be my last time, then! To pass up this chocolate-brown towering inferno would be a travesty of justice—nothing less!

With that thought, I pushed all the negative garbage out of my mind and decided right there, on the spot, that just as soon as I shot the back of her head off, I would flush the rest of my Quaaludes down the toilet and start my life anew.

And that was exactly what I did, in exactly that order.

^{CHAPTER 12} DARK PREMONITIONS

A few hours later, at 12:30 p.m., Swiss Frog time, Danny was sitting across from me in the back of a blue Rolls-Royce limousine that was wider than a commercial fishing trawler and longer than a hearse, which gave me this eerie feeling that I was heading to my own funeral. That was the day’s first dark premonition.

We were on our way to Union Bancaire Privée for the first meeting with our prospective Swiss bankers. I was staring out the rear window—looking up at the towering geyser, still in awe of it—when Danny said with great sadness, “I still don’t see why I had to flush my own Ludes down the toilet. I mean, really, JB! I’d just shoved them up my asshole a couple of hours ago! That’s pretty raw, don’t you think?”

I looked at Danny and smiled. He had a valid point. In the past, I had stuck drugs up my ass too—going through this country or that—and it wasn’t a barrel of laughs. I had once heard that it was easier if you sealed the drugs in a vial and then coated the vial with a hefty amount of Vaseline. But the mere thought of putting that much planning into drug smuggling had precluded me from giving the Vaseline strategy a whirl. Only a true drug addict, after all, would ever consider such an undertaking.

Anyway, I also respected Danny for looking out for me, for always being there to protect the golden goose. The real question, though, was how long would he continue to protect the goose if he ever stopped laying golden eggs? It was a good question, but not one worth dwelling on. I was on a big-time roll now, and the money was pouring in faster than ever. I said, “Yeah, it’s pretty raw; I won’t deny that. But don’t think I don’t appreciate the gesture—especially you ramming them up there without any K-Y jelly or anything—but the time for getting Luded out is over. I need you to be on top of your game now, for the next couple of days, at least, and I need to be on top of my game too. Okay?”

Danny leaned back in his seat and crossed his legs insouciantly and said, “Yeah, I’m fine with that. I could use a little break myself. I just don’t like things being stuck up my ass.”

“We need to slow down with the hookers too, Dan. It’s getting pretty disgusting already.” I started shaking my head to drive my point home. “I mean, this last girl was pretty hot. You shoulda seen her. I think she was six-one, or maybe even taller! I felt like a newborn baby sucking on his mother’s tit—which was kind of a turn-on, actually.” I shifted in my seat uncomfortably, taking the pressure off my left leg. “Black girls taste a little different than white girls, don’t you think? Especially their pussies, which taste like…uhhhhmm…Jamaican sugar cane! Yeah, it’s very sweet, a black girl’s pussy! It’s like…well, it doesn’t really matter. Listen, Dan—I can’t tell you where to stick your dick, that’s your own affair, but I, myself, am done with hookers for a while. Seriously.”

Danny shrugged. “If my wife looked like yours, maybe I’d slow down too. But Nancy’s a real fucking nightmare! The woman just sucks the life out of me! You know what I’m saying?”

I resisted the urge to bring up genealogy and smiled sympathetically. “Maybe the two of you should get a divorce. Everyone else seems to be doing it, so it won’t be a big deal.” I shrugged my shoulders. “Anyway, I don’t mean to dismiss the importance of your personal problems with your wife, but we need to talk business now. We’re gonna be at the bank in a couple of minutes, and there’s a couple things I want to go over with you before we get there. First, you know to let me do the talking, right?”

He nodded. “What do you think, I’m the fucking Blockhead?”

I smiled. “No, your head’s not square enough, and, besides, it has a brain in it. But, listen—in all seriousness—it’s important that you sit back and observe. Try to figure out what these Frogs are thinking. I can’t pick up anything from their body language. I’m starting to think they don’t have any. Anyway, however it goes this morning, no matter how perfect the whole thing turns out to be, we’re gonna leave this meeting saying we’re not interested. That’s a must, Danny. We say that it doesn’t fit with what we’re doing back in the States and we’ve decided it’s not for us. I’ll come up with some logical reason after they tell me a little bit more about the legal issues, okay?”

“No problem,” he replied, “but why?”

“Because of Kaminsky,” I said. “He’s gonna be there at the first meeting, and I trust that toupeed bastard about as far as I can throw him. I’ll tell you—I’m really negative about this whole Swiss thing as it is. I’ve got bad vibes for some reason. But if we do decide to do this, there’s no way Kaminsky can ever know. That would defeat the whole purpose. Maybe we’ll use a different bank if we decide to go forward, or maybe we can still use this one. I’m sure they have no loyalty to Kaminsky.

“Anyway, the most important thing is that no one in the States knows about this. I don’t care how stoned you are, Danny, or how many Ludes you’ve taken or how much coke you’ve snorted. This one never slips out. Not to Madden, not to your father, and especially not to your wife—okay?”

Danny nodded. “Omerta, buddy. To the very end.”

I smiled and nodded and then looked out the window without saying a word. It was a signal to Danny that I was no longer in the mood for conversation, and Danny, being Danny, picked up on it immediately. I spent the remainder of the limousine ride gazing out the window at the immaculate streets of Geneva—marveling at how there wasn’t so much as a speck of garbage on a sidewalk or a brush-stroke of graffiti on a wall. Pretty soon my mind began to wander, and I started wondering why on earth I was doing this. It seemed wrong, it seemed risky, and it seemed reckless. One of my first mentors, Al Abrams, had warned me to steer clear of overseas banking. He said it was a prescription for trouble, that it raised too many red flags. He said that you could never trust the Swiss—that they would sell you down the river if the U.S. government ever put any real pressure on them. He explained that all Swiss banks had branches in the U.S., which made them vulnerable to governmental pressure. All of Al’s points were valid. And Al was the most careful man I had ever met. He actually kept old pens in his office, dating back ten or fifteen years, so if he had to backdate a document, the age of the ink would hold up to an FBI gas chromatograph. Talk about your careful criminals!

In the early days, back when I was getting started, Al and I would meet for breakfast at the Seville Diner, a mile or so down the road from Stratton’s then-headquarters at 2001 Marcus Avenue, just a stone’s throw away from its current location. He would offer me a cup of coffee and a Linzer torte, along with a historical analysis on the evolution of the federal securities laws. He would explain why things were the way they were; what mistakes people had made in the past; and how most of the current securities laws were written in consequence of past criminal acts. I soaked it all up. I took no notes. After all, writing things down was forbidden. Business with Al was done strictly on a handshake. His word was his bond. And he never broke it. Yes, papers were exchanged, if absolutely necessary, but only ones that had been carefully manufactured by Al with even more carefully chosen pens. And, of course, every document firmly supported a notion of plausible deniability.

Al had taught me many things, the most important of which was that every transaction—every securities trade and every wire transfer, whether from a bank or brokerage firm—left a paper trail. And unless that paper trail exonerated you from guilt—or, if not that, supported some alternative explanation that granted you plausible deniability—then sooner or later you’d find yourself on the ass end of a federal indictment.

And so it was that I’d been careful. From the earliest days of Stratton Oakmont, every trade I had consummated, and every wire transfer Janet had made on my behalf, and every questionable corporate finance deal I had participated in, had been dressed up—or padded, as the term went on Wall Street—with various documents and time stamps, even certified letters, which together yielded an alternative explanation that alleviated me of criminal liability. There would be no head shots at the Wolf of Wall Street; I would not get caught between their crosshairs. Al Abrams had taught me well.

But now Al was in jail or awaiting sentencing for, of all things, money laundering. As careful as he’d been, he had been ignorant of one law, namely, withdrawing cash from a bank account in increments slightly less than $10,000, as a means of avoiding filing a form with the IRS. It was a law designed to foil drug dealers and Mafioso types, but it still applied to all U.S. citizens. Another thing Al had taught me was that if I ever received a phone call from a business associate—current or former—and they tried getting me to discuss past dealings, there was a ninety percent chance they were cooperating. And that included him. So when I received a call from Al, and that strange squeaking voice of his uttered those fateful words, “Remember the time,…” I knew he was in trouble. Shortly thereafter I received a phone call from one of Al’s attorneys, who informed me that Al had been indicted and that it would be much appreciated if I bought him out of all the private investments we held together. His assets had been frozen and he was running short of cash. Without hesitation I bought him out of everything, at five times the current market value, funneling millions to him in cash. And then I prayed. I prayed that Al wouldn’t give me up. I prayed that Al would stand up to questioning. I prayed that in spite of the fact that he was cooperating, he would give up everyone but me. But when I checked with one of New York’s top criminal lawyers, I was told there was no such thing as partial cooperation; either you cooperated against everyone or you didn’t cooperate at all. My heart dropped to my stomach.

What would I do if Al cooperated against me? Most of the cash he had withdrawn from the bank had gone to me. He had once told me that he had some ratholes in the jewelry district, for whom he was making money in new issues and they were kicking him back large amounts of cash. Never once had I considered that he was taking money out of the bank. He was too smart for that, wasn’t he? He was the most careful man on the planet. One mistake—that was all it took.

Would I share the same fate? Was Switzerland going to be my one act of stupidity? For five years I had been incredibly careful—never giving the FBI a single head shot. I never talked about the past; my home and office were constantly swept for bugs; I papered every transaction I’d ever made, creating plausible deniability; and I never took small amounts of money out of the bank. In fact, I had withdrawn over $10 million dollars in cash from various bank accounts, in increments of a quarter million or more, for the sole reason of having plausible deniability if I was ever caught with a large amount of cash. In fact, if the FBI ever questioned me I could simply say, “Go check with my bank and you’ll see that all my cash is legit.”

So, yes—I had been careful. But so had my good friend Al, my first mentor, a man I owed a great deal to. And if they had caught him…well, the odds were definitely stacked against me.

And that would be my second dark premonition of the day. But at this particular moment I had no way of knowing that it wouldn’t be my last.

^{CHAPTER 13} MONEY LAUNDERING 101

The private banking firm of Union Bancaire Privée occupied a gleaming black-glass office building that rose up ten stories from the Frog-infested marrow of Geneva. It was located on rue du Rhône, which, I assumed, translated into Rhone Street. It was in the very heart of Geneva’s overpriced shopping district, merely a stone’s throw away from my favorite geyser.

Unlike a U.S. bank, where you walk through the entryway and find smiling tellers hiding behind bulletproof glass, inside this particular lobby there was only a single young lady surrounded by about forty tons of gray Italian marble. She sat behind a solid mahogany desk that was large enough to land my helicopter on. She wore a light-gray pantsuit, a high-necked white blouse, and a blank expression. Her hair was blond and had been pulled back into a tight bun. Her skin was flawless, not a wrinkle or a blemish on it. Another Swiss robot, I thought.

As Danny and I walked to the desk, she eyed us suspiciously. She knew, didn’t she! Of course she did. It was written all over our faces. Young American criminals looking to launder their ill-gotten gains! Drug dealers who made their money selling to schoolchildren!

I took a deep breath and resisted the urge to explain to her that we were just plain old stock swindlers, who were only addicted to drugs. We didn’t actually sell them, for Chrissake!

But thankfully she chose to keep her opinion to herself and not address the exact nature of our crime. All she said was, “Might I help you?”

Might? Jesus H. Christ! More wishes! “Yes, I’m here for a meeting with Jean Jacques Saurel?† My name is Jordan Belfort?” Why the fuck was I phrasing everything as a question? These Swiss bastards were rubbing off on me.

I waited for the female android to answer me, but she didn’t. She just kept staring at me… and then at Danny… eyeing the two of us up and down. Then, as if to reinforce how poorly I’d pronounced Mr. Saurel’s name, she replied, “Ah—you mean Monsieur Jean Jacques Saurel!” How beautiful she made his name sound! “Yes, Mr. Belfort, they would all be waiting for you on the fifth floor.” She motioned to the elevator.

Danny and I ascended in a mahogany-paneled elevator that was operated by a young man dressed like a nineteenth-century Swiss army marshal. I said to Danny in hushed tones, “Remember what I told you. No matter how this goes down, we leave the table saying we’re not interested. Okay?”

Danny nodded.

We exited the elevator and walked down a long mahogany-paneled hallway that reeked of wealth. It was so quiet I felt like I was inside a casket, but I fought the urge to draw any conclusions about that particular thought. Instead, I took a deep breath and kept heading toward the tall, slender figure at the end of the hallway.

“Ahhh, Mr. Belfort! Mr. Porush! Good morning to both of you!” said Jean Jacques Saurel in warm tones. We exchanged handshakes. Then he fixed me with a wry smile and added, “I trust that your stay has improved since that nasty business at the airport. You must tell me over coffee about your adventure with the stewardess!”

He winked at me.

What a guy! I thought. He wasn’t your typical Swiss Frog, that was for sure. He was definitely a piece of Eurotrash, but, still, he was so…suave that there was no way he could be Swiss. He had olive skin and dark brown hair, which he wore slicked back tight, like a true Wall Streeter. His face was long and thin, as were his features, but everything fit together nicely. He wore an immaculate navy worsted suit with chalk-gray pinstripes, a white dress shirt with French cuffs, and a blue silk necktie that looked expensive. His clothes hung on his frame oh so sweetly, in a way that only those European bastards could pull off.

We had a brief conversation in the hallway, during which I found out that Jean Jacques wasn’t actually Swiss but French, on loan from the bank’s Paris branch. That made sense. Then he impressed the hell out of me by stating that he was uncomfortable having Gary Kaminsky attend this meeting but since it was he, Gary, who had made the introduction, it was unavoidable. He suggested that we take things only so far and then meet personally either later today or tomorrow. I told him that I was already planning to end the meeting on a negative note for that very same reason. He pursed his lips and nodded approvingly, as if to say, “Not bad!” I didn’t even bother looking at Danny. I knew he was impressed.

Jean Jacques escorted us into a conference room that looked more like a men’s smoking club than anything else. There were six Swiss Frogs sitting around a long glass conference table, each dressed in traditional business attire. Each of them was holding a lit cigarette or had one burning in an ashtray in front of them. From top to bottom the room was filled with a giant cloud of smoke.

And then there was Kaminsky. He was sitting amid the Frogs with that awful toupee lying on his skull like a dead animal. On his fat round face was a shit-eating grin that made me want to smack him. For a brief instant I considered asking him to leave the room, but I decided against it. Better he should witness the meeting and hear with his own ears that I had decided against doing business in Switzerland.

After a few minutes of small talk, I said, “I’m curious about your bank secrecy laws. I’ve heard many conflicting things from attorneys back in the United States. Under what circumstances would you cooperate with the U.S. government?”

Kaminsky replied, “That’s the best part of doing business in—”

I cut him off. “Gary, if I was interested in your opinion on this matter I would’ve fuckin—” I stopped myself, realizing that these Swiss robots probably wouldn’t appreciate my usual fuck-speak. Then I humbly said, “Excuse me, everyone—I would’ve asked you for it when we were back in New York, Gary.”

The Frogs smiled and nodded their heads. The unspoken message was: “Yes, this Kaminsky is as great a fool as he looks.” But now my mind was racing ahead. Obviously, Kaminsky was going to get some sort of finder’s fee if I decided to do business with the bank. Why else would he be so anxious to mollify my concerns? Originally I had thought that Kaminsky was just another schnook who liked to show how much he knew about an obscure topic. Wall Street was full of those sorts of people. Dilettantes, they were called. But now I was convinced that Kaminsky’s motivation was financial. If I were to actually open an account at the bank, he would be alerted through the receipt of his finder’s fee. That was a problem.

As if he were reading my mind, Jean Jacques said, “Mr. Kaminsky has always been quick to offer his opinion on matters such as these. I find that rather odd, considering he has nothing to gain or lose on your decision. He has already been paid a small finder’s fee just for bringing you here. Whether or not you choose to do business with Union Banc does not bear on Mr. Kaminsky’s pocketbook one way or the other.”

I nodded in understanding. I found it interesting that Saurel didn’t speak in wishes. He had a complete command of the English language, idioms and all.

Saurel plowed on: “But to answer your question, the only way the Swiss government would cooperate with the U.S. government would be if the alleged crime was also a crime in Switzerland. For example, in Switzerland, there is no law regarding tax evasion. So if we were to receive a request from the United States government regarding such a matter, we would not cooperate with them.”

“Mr. Saurel is entirely correct,” said the bank’s vice president, a thin little Frog with spectacles, who went by the name of Pierre something or other. “We have no great affection for your government. You would please not take offense at this. But the fact remains that we would cooperate only if the alleged crime is a penal offense, or, as you would say it, a felony.”

Then a second Pierre chimed in, although this one was younger and was bald as a cue ball. He said, “You would find that the Swiss penal code is far more liberal than that of your own country. Many of your felonies are not considered felonies in Switzerland.”

Christ almighty! The word felony was enough to send a shiver down my spine. In fact, it was already obvious that there were huge problems with my preconceived notion of using Switzerland as a rathole… unless, of course… well… could ratholes be legal in Switzerland? I ran the possibility through my mind. No, I strongly doubted it, but I would have to inquire about it when I met with Saurel in private. I smiled and said, “Well, I’m really not concerned about that sort of thing, because I have absolutely no intention of breaking any U.S. laws.” That was a bold-faced lie. But I loved the way it sounded. Who cared that it was a boatload of crap? For some inexplicable reason it still made me feel more at ease about being in Switzerland. I soldiered on: “And when I say that, I speak for Danny as well. You see, our sole reason for wanting to have money in Switzerland is for asset protection. My primary concern is that in my line of work there exists a great likelihood of getting sued—wrongfully, I might add. But either way what I’d like to know—or, to put it more bluntly, what’s most important to me—is that under no circumstances will you turn any of my money over to a U.S. citizen or, for that matter, any person on the planet who happens to get a civil judgment against me.”

Saurel smiled. “Not only would we never do that,” he mused, “but we don’t even recognize anything that is—as you say—civil. Even if we were to get a subpoena from your Securities and Exchange Commission—which is a civil regulatory body—we would not cooperate with them under any circumstances.” Then, as an afterthought, he added, “And that would be even if the alleged offense is a felony under Swiss law.” He nodded to drive his point home. “Even then we would still not cooperate!” He smiled a conspirator’s smile.

I nodded approvingly and then looked around the room. Everyone seemed to be pleased with the way things were going, everyone except me. I couldn’t have been more turned off. Saurel’s last comment had struck a nerve with me, sending my brain into overdrive. The simple fact was that if the Swiss government refused to cooperate with an SEC investigation, then the SEC would have no choice but to refer their request over to the U.S. Attorney’s office for a criminal investigation. Talk about being the agent of your own demise!

I began playing out possible scenarios in my mind. Ninety percent of all SEC cases were settled at the civil level. It was only when the SEC felt something overly egregious was going on that they referred the case to the FBI for criminal investigation. But if the SEC couldn’t run their investigation—if they were stonewalled by the Swiss—how could they decide what was egregious and what was not? In truth, much of what I was doing wasn’t all that terrible, was it?

I took a deep breath and said, “Well, it all sounds reasonable to me, but I wonder how the U.S. government would even know where to look—meaning how would they know which Swiss bank to send a subpoena to? None of the accounts have names; they’re just numbered. So unless someone tipped them off”—I resisted the urge to look at Kaminsky—“as to where you were keeping your money, or unless you were careless enough to leave a paper trail of some sort, then how would they even know where to start? Do they have to guess your account number? There must be a thousand banks in Switzerland, and each one of them probably has a hundred thousand accounts. That’s millions of accounts, all with different account numbers. It would be like finding a needle in a haystack. It would be impossible.” I looked directly into Saurel’s dark eyes.

After a few moments of silence, Saurel replied, “That is another excellent question. But to answer, I would ask you to oblige me the opportunity to give you a small lesson in Swiss banking history.”

This was getting good. The importance of understanding the implications of the past was exactly what Al Abrams had drilled into my head during all those early-morning breakfast meetings. I nodded and said, “Please do. I’m actually fascinated with history, especially when it pertains to a situation like this, where I’m contemplating doing business in unfamiliar territory.”

Saurel smiled and said, “The whole notion of numbered accounts is somewhat misleading. While it’s true that all Swiss banks offer our clients this option—as a means of maintaining their privacy—each account is tied to a name, which is kept on record at the bank.”

With that statement my heart sank. Saurel continued, “Many years ago, before World War Two, that was not the case. You see, back then it was standard practice among Swiss bankers to open an account without a name being attached to it. Everything was based on personal relationships and a handshake. Many of these accounts were held in the names of corporations. But unlike corporations in the United States, these were bearer corporations, which, again, had no name attached to them. In other words, whoever was the actual bearer of the corporation’s physical stock certificates would be deemed the rightful owner.

“But then came Adolf Hitler and the despicable Nazis. This is a very sad chapter in our history and one that we are not particularly proud of. We did our best to help as many of our Jewish clients as we possibly could, but in the end I would say that we did not help enough. As you know, Mr. Belfort, I am French, but I think I speak for every man in this room when I say that we wish we had done more.” With that, he paused and nodded his head solemnly.

Every man in the room, including the court jester himself, Kaminsky, a Jew in his own right, nodded in sympathy. I assumed that everyone knew that Danny and I were both Jewish, and I couldn’t help but wonder if Saurel had said these things for our benefit. Or had he really meant what he’d said? Either way, before he began speaking I had already gone ten steps ahead and knew exactly where he was going next. The simple fact was that before Hitler was able to sweep through Europe and round up six million Jews and exterminate them in the gas chambers, many were able to move their money into Switzerland. They had seen the handwriting on the wall back in the early thirties, when the Nazis were first coming to power. But smuggling out their money had proved to be much easier than smuggling out themselves. Virtually every country in Europe, with the exception of Denmark, denied millions of desperate Jews safe haven within their borders. Most of these countries had cut secret deals with Hitler, agreeing to turn over their Jewish populations if Hitler agreed not to attack. These were agreements that Hitler quickly reneged on, once he had all the Jews safely tucked away in concentration camps. And as country after country fell to the Nazis, the Jews ran out of places to hide. How very ironic it was that Switzerland had been so quick to accept Jewish money yet so reluctant to accept Jewish souls.

After the Nazis were finally defeated, many of the surviving children had come to Switzerland in search of their family’s secret bank accounts. But they had no way to prove that they had any rights to them. After all, there were no names tied to the accounts, only numbers. Unless the surviving children knew exactly in which bank their parents had kept their money and precisely which banker they had been doing business with, there was no possible way for them to lay claim to the money. To this very day, billions upon billions of dollars were still unaccounted for.

And then my mind wandered to a darker side. How many of these Swiss bastards had known exactly who the surviving children were but chose not to seek them out? Even worse—how many Jewish children whose entire families had been wiped out had shown up at the correct Swiss bank, and had spoken to the correct Swiss banker, only to be lied to? God! What a fucking tragedy! Only the most noble of the Swiss bankers would have had the integrity to make sure that the rightful heirs received what had been left for them. And in Zurich—which was full of fucking Krauts—you would be hard-pressed to find many Jew-lovers. Perhaps in French Geneva things had been a bit better, but only a bit. Human nature was human nature. And all that Jewish money had been lost forever, absorbed into the very Swiss banking system itself, enriching this tiny country beyond imagination, which probably accounted for the lack of beggars on the streets.

“…and so you see why,” said Saurel, “it is now required that every account opened in Switzerland has a beneficial owner attached to it. There is no exception.”

I looked over at Danny. He nodded imperceptibly. But the unspoken message was: “This is a fucking nightmare.”

On the ride back to the hotel, Danny and I hardly exchanged a word. I stared out the window and saw nothing but the ghosts of a few million dead Jews, still searching for their money. By now the back of my leg was literally on fire. Christ! If only I wasn’t in such terrible chronic pain I could probably beat my drug habit. I was feeling sharp as a tack. It had been more than twenty-four hours since I’d taken any pill, and my mind was so acute I felt like I could work through any problem, no matter how insurmountable it might seem. But how could I work around Swiss banking laws? The law was the law, and having watched Al Abrams go down had only served to reinforce that age-old cliché of how ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it. The simple fact was that if I were to open an account with Union Bancaire, I would have to give them a copy of my passport, which would then be kept on file at the bank. And if the U.S. Department of Justice issued a criminal subpoena related to stock fraud—which, of course, was also a crime in Switzerland—then my goose would be cooked. Even if the feds didn’t know which account was mine or, for that matter, which bank I was doing business with, it still wouldn’t slow them down. Their subpoena would go directly to the Swiss Department of Justice, which would then send out a blanket request to every Swiss bank in the country, demanding that they turn over all records for any accounts belonging to the individual referenced in the subpoena.

And that would be that.

Christ—I would be better off sticking with my own ratholes in the United States. At least if they were ever subpoenaed they could simply lie under oath! It wasn’t a pleasant thought, but at least there was no paper trail.

Wait a second! Who said that I had to give the bank my passport? What was to stop me from having one of my ratholes come to Switzerland and open an account with their passport? What were the chances that the FBI would hit upon the name of my U.S. rathole within my Swiss rathole? It was a rathole within a rathole! A double layer of protection! If the United States issued a subpoena for records relating to Jordan Belfort, the Swiss Department of Justice would send out their request and come up with nothing!

And now that I thought about it, why would I even want to use one of my current ratholes? In the past I had chosen my ratholes based not only on their trustworthiness but also on their ability to generate large amounts of cash in ways that wouldn’t alert the IRS. That was a difficult combination to find. My primary rathole was Elliot Lavigne—who was rapidly turning into a nightmare on Elm Street. Not only was he my primary rathole but he was also the man responsible for introducing me to Quaaludes. He was the President of Perry Ellis, one of America’s largest clothing manufacturers. But this exalted position of his was slightly misleading. In point of fact, he was ten times crazier than Danny. Yes, as impossible as it might seem, next to him, Danny was a choirboy.

Besides being a compulsive gambler and a drug addict of the highest order, Elliot was also a sex fiend and a compulsive marital cheat. He was stealing millions of dollars a year from Perry Ellis—having secret deals with his overseas factories, which were overcharging Perry Ellis an extra dollar or two per garment and then kicking back that cash to Elliot. The numbers were in the millions. When I made Elliot money in new issues, he would then settle up with me using the very cash he had received from his overseas factories. It was a perfect exchange; no paper trail to be found anywhere. But Elliot was starting to go bad on me. His gambling and drug habits were getting the best of him. He was falling behind on his payments to me. As of now he owed me almost $2 million in back profits from having ratholed new issues for me. But if I were to cut him off completely, I would lose that money for sure. So I was in the process of slowly phasing him out, continuing to make him money in new issues while he paid down his debt.

In spite of that, Elliot had served his purpose well. He had kicked me back more than $5 million in cash, which was now safely tucked away in safe-deposit boxes in the United States. Just how I was going to get all that money over to Switzerland, I still wasn’t so sure—although I had some ideas. I would discuss that matter with Saurel when we met in a few hours. Anyway, I had always assumed that replacing Elliot with another rathole who could generate that much cash without leaving a paper trail was going to be a problem. But now, having Switzerland as my primary rathole layer, the issue of generating “clean” cash would no longer be a concern. I would simply keep the money in my Swiss account and let it collect interest. The only issue I hadn’t been able to address at today’s meeting was how I was supposed to go about using all the money I would be keeping in my Swiss account. How was I supposed to spend any of it? How would I be able to funnel the post-laundered money back into the United States to make investments? There were still many questions to be answered.

But the most important thing was that by using Switzerland, I could now choose my ratholes based solely on trustworthiness. This opened up a much larger universe of prospective ratholes, and my mind quickly turned to my wife’s family. None of them were U.S. citizens; they all lived in Great Britain—outside the prying eyes of the FBI. In fact, there was a little-known exemption in the federal securities laws that allowed non-U.S. citizens to invest in public companies under much more favorable terms than U.S. citizens. It was called Regulation S, and it allowed foreigners to buy private stock in public companies, while avoiding the two-year holding period required under Rule 144. Instead, under Regulation S, a foreigner had to hold their stock for only forty days. It was a ridiculous law, giving foreigners an incredible advantage over U.S. investors. In consequence—like most regulatory brain farts—it had resulted in a massive wave of abuse, as savvy U.S. investors struck up under-the-table deals with foreigners and illegally used Regulation S to make private investments in public companies, without having to wait two full years to sell their stock (under Rule 144). I had been approached numerous times by foreigners who, for a modest fee, had offered to act as my nominee—allowing me to use their non-U.S. citizenship to do Regulation S business. But I had always declined. Al Abrams’s warning was in the back of my mind, always. And, besides, how on earth was I supposed to trust some foreigner with something so inherently illegal? After all, using a foreign nominee to do a Regulation S stock purchase was a serious criminal offense, one that was sure to tweak the interest of the FBI. So I had always shied away from it.

But now, with a double-layered rathole… with my wife’s relatives as the secondary layer of protection…well, all of a sudden it didn’t seem all that risky!

And then my mind zeroed in on my wife’s aunt Patricia—no, my aunt Patricia. Yes, she had become my aunt too! The first time Aunt Patricia and I met, we both knew we were kindred spirits. How ironic that was—considering what she had seen the first time she laid eyes on me. It was two years ago, in the Dorchester Hotel in London, and she had walked in on me right in the middle of a Quaalude overdose. In fact, I was in the middle of drowning in a toilet bowl when she entered the hotel room. But rather than judging me, she talked me through it and stayed up with me all night, holding my head over that very toilet as my body spewed out the poison I’d put into it. Then she ran her fingers through my hair, like my mother did when I was a child, as wave after wave of anxiety hit me from all the coke I had snorted. I had been unable to keep down any Xanax to offset the anxiety from the coke. In consequence, I was crawling out of my own skin. The next day we had lunch together, and, without making me feel the least bit guilty over what she had seen, she somehow convinced me to stop using drugs. I had actually stayed sober for two straight weeks. I was vacationing in England with Nadine, and the two of us had never gotten along better. I was so happy that I had even thought of moving to England, to make Aunt Patricia a part of my life. But deep down I knew it was just a fantasy. My life was in the United States; Stratton was in the United States; my power was in the United States; which meant I had to be in the Unites States. And when I finally arrived back in the United States, under the kind influence of Danny Porush and Elliot Lavigne and the rest of my merry band of brokers, my drug habit came roaring back. And with my back pain fueling the fire, it roared back stronger than ever.

Aunt Patricia was sixty-five, divorced, a retired schoolteacher, and a closet anarchist. She would be perfect. She had contempt for all things governmental and could be trusted without question. If I asked her to do this for me, she would smile her warmest smile and be on a plane the next day. Besides, Aunt Patricia had no money. Each time I saw her I would offer her more than she could possibly spend in a year. And each time she refused. She was too proud. But now I could explain to her that since she was doing a service for me, she had more than earned her keep. I would let her spend whatever she wanted. In point of fact, I would transform her life from rags to riches. What a wonderful thought that was! And, besides, she would hardly spend anything! She was a woman who had grown up amid the rubble of World War II and was currently living on a tiny pension from her schoolteaching days. She wouldn’t know how to burn through any serious cash—even if she wanted to! Most of what she would spend would be used to spoil her two grandchildren. And that was just fine! In fact, the mere thought of it warmed my heart.

If the U.S. government ever came knocking on Patricia’s door, she would tell them to stick it up their Yankee asses! With that thought I started laughing out loud.

“What are you so happy about?” muttered Danny. “That whole meeting was a waste of time! And I don’t even have any Quaaludes to drown my sorrow in. So, tell me, what’s on that twisted mind of yours?”

I smiled. “I’m meeting with Saurel in a few hours. I have a few more questions for him, but I’m pretty sure I already know the answers. Anyway, what I want you to do is call Janet as soon as we get back to the hotel and tell her to have a Learjet waiting for us at the airport first thing in the morning. And tell her to book the Presidential Suite at the Dorchester. We’re going to London, buddy. We’re going to London.”

^{CHAPTER 14} INTERNATIONAL OBSESSIONS

Three hours later I was sitting across from Jean Jacques Saurel in Le Jardin restaurant, in the lobby of Hotel Le Richemond. The table had some of the finest place settings I’d ever seen. A wonderful array of hand-polished sterling silver and an immaculate collection of bone-white china rested upon a heavily starched snow-white tablecloth. Really fancy stuff it was; must’ve cost a fortune! I thought. But, like the rest of this antique hotel, the restaurant’s decor was not to my taste. It was decidedly art deco, circa 1930, which was the last time, I assumed, the restaurant had been renovated.

Still, in spite of the less-than-stellar decor—and the fact that I was jet-lagged to the point of near exhaustion—the company happened to be excellent. Saurel had turned out to be quite a whoremaster himself, and at this particular moment he was in the middle of explaining to me the fine art of bedding Swiss Frog women, who he said were hornier than jackrabbits. In fact, they were so easy to coax into bed, he claimed, that each day he would stare out his office window and watch them walk along rue du Rhône—with their short skirts and tiny dogs—while he painted imaginary bull’s-eyes on their backs.

I found that to be a clever observation and was saddened by the fact that Danny hadn’t been present to hear it. But the topics Saurel and I were planning to discuss this evening were so horrendously illegal that you simply couldn’t have this sort of conversation in the presence of a third party—even if the third party happened to be involved in the crime. It was a patent impossibility. It was one more lesson taught to me by Al Abrams, who’d said, “Two people make a crime; three make a conspiracy.”

So here I was, alone with Saurel, but my mind was drifting back to Danny and more specifically what on earth he was doing right now. He wasn’t the sort of guy you just let out of your sight in a foreign country. Left to his own devices, it was almost certain that something bad would happen. The only saving grace was that in this particular country, there wasn’t much Danny could do, short of rape or murder, that the man seated across from me couldn’t fix with one phone call to the proper authority.

“…so most of the time,” proclaimed Saurel, “I take them to the Métropole Hotel, just across from the bank, and I fuck them there. By the way, Jordan, I must say that I find this English word of yours, fuck, to be quite satisfying. There is really no French word that gets the point across quite as well. But not to digress—the point I was trying to make is that I have made it my second profession, behind banking, of course, to bed as many Swiss women as possible.” He shrugged a gigolo’s shrug and smiled a warm Eurotrash smile. Then he took another deep pull from his cigarette.

“According to Kaminsky,” he said through exhaled smoke, “you share my love of beautiful women, yes?”

I smiled and nodded.

“Ahhh…that is very fine,” continued the Whoremaster, “very fine! But I was also told that your wife is very beautiful. How odd that is, wouldn’t you say? To have such a beautiful wife yet to still have a wandering eye? But I can relate to that, my friend. You see, my wife is also quite beautiful, yet I feel compelled to pleasure myself with any young woman who might care to have me, as long as she is up to my standards of excellence. And in this country there is no shortage of these sorts of women.” He shrugged. “But I guess this is the way of the world, the way things are supposed to be for men like us, wouldn’t you say?”

Jesus! That sounded horrific! Yet I had said those same words to myself many times—trying to rationalize my own behavior. But to be on the receiving end of it made me realize how truly ridiculous it was. “Well, Jean, there comes a time when a man has to say to himself that he’s proved his point. And that’s the point I’m at now. I love my wife and I’m done screwing around.”

Saurel narrowed his eyes sagely and nodded. “I have been to that point many times myself. And it is a fine feeling when you arrive there, is it not? It serves to remind us of what is truly important in life. After all, without a family to come home to, it would be an empty life, indeed. That is why I relish the time I spend with my family oh so much. And then, after a few days of it, I realize that I might very well slit my wrists if I were to stay around any longer.

“Don’t misunderstand me, Jordan. It is not that I don’t love my wife and child. Indeed I do. It is simply that I am French, and as a French man there is only so much of this wife-and-child business that I can reasonably be expected to swallow before I begin to resent them greatly. The point I make is that my time away from home makes me a much better husband to my wife and a much better father to my child.” Saurel picked up his cigarette from the glass ashtray and took a tremendous pull.

And I waited… and waited… but he never exhaled. Wow, that was interesting! I had never seen my father do that one either! Saurel seemed to internalize the smoke—absorbing it into his very core. All at once it occurred to me that Swiss men seemed to smoke for different reasons than American men did. It was as if in Switzerland it was all about being entitled to partake in a simple manly pleasure, while in the United States it had more to do with having the right to kill yourself with a terrible vice, in spite of all the warnings.

It was time to get down to business. “Jean,” I said warmly, “to answer your first question—on how much money I’m interested in moving to Switzerland. I think it would make sense if I started small, perhaps with five million dollars or so. Then, if things work out, I would consider bringing over a significantly larger amount—perhaps another twenty million over the next twelve months. As far as using the bank’s couriers, I appreciate the gesture, but I would just as soon use my own. I have a few friends in the United States who owe me some favors, and I’m sure that they would agree to do this for me.

“But I still have many concerns, the first of which is Kaminsky. It’s impossible for me to go forward if he has any knowledge of my relationship with your bank. In fact, if he even suspected I had one penny at your bank, it would be a complete deal breaker. I would close all my accounts and move my money elsewhere.”

Saurel seemed entirely unfazed. “You need never raise this issue again,” he said icily. “Not only will Kaminsky never know of this, but if he chooses to make any inquiries in this matter, his passport will be put on a watch list and he will be arrested by Interpol at their earliest convenience. We Swiss take our secrecy laws more seriously than you can possibly imagine. You see, Kaminsky was once an employee of our bank, so he is held to a much higher standard. I do not kid you when I say that he will wind up in jail if he discloses matters such as these—or, for that matter, sticks his nose in areas that he would be better off steering clear of. He will be locked up in a room and we will throw away the room. So let us put Kaminsky aside, once and for all. If you choose to keep him in your employ, that is your own decision. But be wary of him, because he is a babbling buffoon.”

I nodded and smiled. “I have my reasons for keeping Kaminsky where he is right now. Dollar Time is losing serious amounts of money, and if I hire a new CFO he might start to dig. So, for now, it’s better to let sleeping dogs lie. Anyway, we have more important issues to discuss than Dollar Time. If you give me your word that Kaminsky will never know about my account, then I will take you at it. I’ll never bring it up again.”

Saurel nodded. “I like the way you conduct business, Jordan. Perhaps you were European in a former life, eh?” He gave me his broadest smile yet.

“Thanks,” I said with a touch of irony. “I take that as a great compliment, Jean. But I still have some important questions to ask you, mainly in reference to that crap you guys handed me this morning about giving you my passport to open up an account. I mean—come on, Jean—that’s a bit much, don’t you think?”

Saurel lit up another cigarette and took a deep drag. Through exhaled smoke, he flashed me his conspirator’s smile, and said, “Well, my friend, knowing you now for who you are, I assume you have already figured out a way around this impediment, yes?”

I nodded but said nothing.

After a few seconds of silence, Saurel realized that I was expecting him to come clean with me. “Very well, then,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “Most of what was said in the bank was complete horseshit, as you Americans say. It was said for the benefit of Kaminsky and, of course, for the benefit of one another. After all, we must appear to abide by the law. The simple fact is that it would be suicide for you to have your name behind a numbered Swiss account. I would never advise you to do such a thing. However, I think it would be prudent for you to open an account with our bank—one that proudly bears your name for one and all to see. This way, if the U.S. government ever subpoenaed your phone records, you would have a plausible explanation for calling our bank. As you know, there is no law against having a Swiss account. All you would have to do is send us a small sum of money, perhaps two hundred fifty thousand dollars, which we would then invest for you in various European stocks—only the best companies, of course—and that would give you reason enough to have contact with our bank on a continuous basis.”

Not bad! I thought. Plausible deniability was obviously an international obsession among white-collar criminals. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, trying to take the pressure off my left leg, which was slowly catching fire, and I casually said, “I see your point, and I might very well do that. But just so you know what kind of man you’re dealing with, the chances of me calling your bank from my own home are less than zero. I would sooner drive myself down to a pay phone in Brazil—with a couple of thousand cruzeiros in my pocket—before I allowed your number to appear on my phone bill.

“But to answer your question, I’m planning to use a family member with a different last name than mine. She’s from my wife’s side, and she’s not even a U.S. citizen; she’s British. I’m flying to London tomorrow morning, and I can have her back here the day after tomorrow—passport in hand—ready to open an account at your bank.”

Saurel nodded once and said, “I assume you trust this woman implicitly, because if you don’t, we can provide you with people who will use their own passports. These people are entirely unsophisticated—mostly farmers and shepherds from the Isle of Mann or other tax-free havens such as that—and they are one hundred percent trustworthy. Furthermore, they will not be allowed access to your account. But I’m sure that you have already taken this woman’s trustworthiness into consideration. However, I would still suggest that you meet with a man named Roland Franks.† He is a professional with matters such as these, especially in the creation of documents. He can create bills of sale, financial letters, purchase orders, brokerage confirmations, and almost anything else within reason. He is what we call a trustee. He will help you form bearer corporations, which will further insulate you from the prying eyes of your government and allow you to break up your ownership of public companies into smaller increments, to avoid filing any of the requisite forms for over five percent stock ownership. He would be invaluable to a man like you—in all aspects of your business—both foreign and domestic.”

Interesting. They had their own vertically integrated rathole service. You had to love the Swiss. Roland Franks would act as a forger—generating documents that would support a notion of plausible deniability. “I would very much like to meet this man,” I replied. “Perhaps you can arrange something for the day after tomorrow.”

Saurel nodded and said, “I will see to it. Mr. Franks will also be helpful in developing strategies, which will pave the way for you to reinvest or, for that matter, to spend as much of your overseas money as you so desire, in ways that will not be, as you say, red-flagged by your regulatory agencies.”

“For instance?” I asked open-endedly.

“Well, there are many ways—the most common of which is to issue you a Visa card or an American Express card, which will be tied directly to one of your accounts at the bank. When you make a purchase, the money will be automatically deducted from your account.” Then he smiled and said, “And from what Kaminsky tells me, you spend quite a bit of money on your credit cards. So this will be a valuable tool for you.”

“Will the card be in my name or in the name of the woman I plan on bringing to the bank?”

“It will be in your name. But I would recommend that you allow us to issue one to her as well. It would be wise to let her spend a token sum each month, if you follow my line of thinking.”

I nodded in understanding. It was plainly obvious that having Patricia spend money each month would further support the notion that the account was actually hers. But I saw a different problem—namely, that if the card was in my name, all the FBI would have to do was follow me around while I went shopping and then walk into a store after I’d made a purchase and demand to see the credit-card imprint. Then my goose would be cooked. I found it odd that Saurel would recommend a strategy that I’d shot a broad hole through so quickly. But I chose to keep that thought to myself. Instead, I said, “In spite of my lavish spending habits, I still see that as a way to spend only a modest sum. After all, Jean, the transactions we’re contemplating are in the millions. I don’t think a debit card—as we call it in the U.S.—will make much of a dent in that. Are there other ways where larger amounts can be repatriated?”

“Yes, of course. Another common strategy is to put a mortgage on your home—using your own money. In other words, you would have Mr. Franks form a bearer corporation and then move money from one of your Swiss accounts into the corporate account. Then Mr. Franks would draw up official mortgage documents, which you would sign as the mortgagee and receive the money like that. This strategy has two benefits. First, you will be charging yourself interest, which will be earned in whatever country you choose to form your overseas corporation. Nowadays, Mr. Franks prefers to use the British Virgin Islands, which tend to be very lax with their paperwork requirements. And, of course, they have no income taxes. The second benefit is in the form of a domestic tax deduction in the United States. After all, in your country, mortgage interest is tax deductible.”

I ran that one through my mind and had to admit it was clever. But this strategy seemed even riskier than the debit card. If I were to put a mortgage on my home, it would be recorded by the Town of Old Brookville, which meant all the FBI would have to do is go down to the town and request a copy of my deed—at which point they would see that an overseas company had funded the mortgage. Talk about your red flags! Apparently, this was the more difficult part of the game. Getting money into a Swiss bank account was easy, and shielding yourself from an investigation was easy too. But repatriating the money without leaving a paper trail would prove to be difficult.

“By the way,” Jean asked, “what is the name of the woman you will be bringing to the bank?”

“Her name is Patricia; Patricia Mellor.”

Saurel smiled his conspirator’s smile once more, and he said, “That is a fine name, my friend. How could a woman with such a name ever break the law, eh?”

An hour later, Saurel and I had stepped out of the hotel elevator and were walking down the fourth-floor hallway on our way to Danny’s room. Like the lobby, the hallway’s carpet had the look of the retarded monkey, and the color scheme was the same sad mixture of dog-piss yellow and regurgitation pink. But the doors were brand-spanking new. They were dark-brown walnut, and they gleamed brilliantly. An interesting dichotomy, I thought. Maybe that was what they meant by Old World charm.

When we reached Danny’s gleaming door, I said, “Listen, Jean—Danny is quite the party animal, so don’t be surprised if he’s slurring a bit. He was drinking scotch when I left him, and I think he’s still got some sleeping pills in his system from the flight over. But, whatever he sounds like, I want you to know that when he’s sober he’s sharp as a tack. In fact, he lives by the motto ‘If you go out with the boys you gotta wake up with the men.’ You understand, Jean?”

Saurel smiled broadly and replied, “Ah, but of course I do. I could not help but respect a man who lives by such a philosophy. This is the way of things in much of Europe. I would be the last man to judge another based on his desire for the carnal pleasures.”

I turned the key and opened the door, and there was Danny, lying on the hotel-room floor, flat on his back, wearing nothing at all—unless, of course, you consider naked Swiss hookers clothing. After all, he was wearing four of those. There was one sitting on his face, backward, with her tight little butt smothering his nose; there was a second mounted upon his loins, thrusting up and down. She was engaged in a ferocious kiss with the girl sitting on Danny’s face. There was a third hooker holding his ankles down in a spread-eagle position, and the fourth hooker was holding his arms down, also spread eagle. The obvious fact that two new people had entered the room hadn’t slowed them down a bit. They were still going strong—business as usual.

I turned to Jean and took a moment to regard him. His head was cocked to one side and his right hand was rubbing his chin thoughtfully, as if he were trying to make heads or tails of what each girl’s role was in this sordid scene. Then, all at once, he narrowed his eyes and began nodding his head slowly.

“Danny!” I sputtered loudly. “What the fuck are you doing, you deviant?”

Danny wriggled his right arm free and pushed the young hooker off his face. He lifted his head and tried his best to smile, but his face was nearly frozen. Apparently he had gotten his hands on some cocaine too. “Ize zgezzing zcrummed!” he muttered through clenched teeth.

“You’re getting what? I can’t understand a word you’re fucking saying.”

Danny took a deep breath, as if he were trying to muster up every last ounce of manly strength, and he snapped in a staccato beat: “I…get…ting…scru…ummed!”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I muttered.

Saurel said, “Ah, I do believe the man has said that he is getting scrummed, as if he were a rugby player of some sort.” With that, Jean Jacques nodded sagely and said, “Rugby is a very popular sport in France. It appears that your friend is, indeed, being scrummed, but in a most unusual fashion, although one I entirely agree with. Go upstairs and call your wife, Jordan. I will take care of your friend. Let’s see if he is a true gentleman and will be kind enough to share the wealth.”

I nodded and then went about searching Danny’s room—finding and flushing twenty Quaaludes and three grams of coke down the toilet. Then I left him and Saurel to their own devices.

A few minutes later I found myself lying in bed, contemplating the insanity of my life, when all at once I got a desperate urge to call the Duchess. I looked at my watch: It was 9:30 p.m. I did the calculation—4:30 a.m., New York time. Could I call her that late? The Duchess loved her sleep. Before my brain could answer the question, I was already dialing the phone.

After a few rings came the voice of my wife: “Hello?”

Gingerly, apologetically: “Hi, honey, it’s me. I’m sorry I called so late, but I’m really missing you bad, and I just wanted to tell you how much I love you.”

Sweet as sugar: “Oh, I love you too, baby, but it’s not late. It’s the middle of the afternoon! You got the time change backward.”

“Really?” I said. “Hmmm…well, anyway, I’m missing you really bad. You have no idea.”

“Aw, that’s so sweet,” said the luscious Duchess. “Channy and I both wish you were home with us. When are you coming back, my love?”

“As soon as I can. I’m flying to London tomorrow, to see Aunt Patricia.”

“Really?” she said, slightly surprised. “Why are you going to see Aunt Patricia?”

All at once it occurred to me that I shouldn’t be talking about this on the phone—and then all at once it occurred to me that I was getting my wife’s favorite aunt involved in a money-laundering caper. So I pushed those troubling thoughts aside and said, “No, no, that’s not what I meant. I have other business in London, so I’m going to stop in on Aunt Patricia and take her out for dinner.”

“Ohhh,” answered a happy Duchess. “Well, send Aunt Patricia my regards, okay, sweetie?”

“I will, baby, I will.” I paused for a brief moment, then I said, “Honey?”

“What, sweetie?”

With a heavy heart: “I’m sorry for everything.”

“For what, honey? What are you sorry for?”

“For everything, Nae. You know what I’m talking about. Anyway, I flushed all my Ludes down the toilet, and I haven’t done one since the plane flight over.”

“Really? How does your back feel?”

“Not too good, baby; it hurts really bad. But I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if there’s anything I can do. The last surgery made it even worse. Now it hurts all day long, and all night too. I don’t know—maybe all the pills are making it worse or something. I’m not really sure anymore. When I get back to the States, I’ll go see that doctor in Florida.”

“It’ll work out, my love. You’ll see. Do you know how much I love you?”

“Yes,” I said, lying. “I do. And I love you back twice as much. Just watch what a great husband I’m gonna be when I get home, okay?”

“You’re already great. Now go to sleep, baby, and come home safe to me as soon as you can, okay?”

“I will, Nae. I love you tons.” I hung up the phone, lay down on the bed, and began pushing in the back of my left leg with my thumb, trying to find the spot where the pain was coming from. But I couldn’t find it. It was coming from nowhere, and everywhere. And it seemed to be moving. I took a deep breath and tried to relax myself, to will away the pain.

Without even knowing it, I found myself saying that same silent prayer—that a bolt of lightning would come down from out of a clear blue sky and electrocute my wife’s dog. Then, with my left leg still on fire, the jet lag finally got the best of me and I fell asleep.

^{CHAPTER 15} THE CONFESSOR

Heathrow Airport! London! It was one of my favorite cities in the world, save the weather, the food, and the service—the former of which was the worst in Europe, the middle of which was the worst in Europe, and the latter of which was the worst in Europe too. Nevertheless, you still had to love the Brits, or, if not that, at least respect them. After all, it’s not every day that a country the size of Ohio, with a natural-resource base of a few billion pounds of dirty coal, can dominate an entire planet for more than two centuries.

And if that wasn’t enough, then you had to be awed by the uncanny ability of a few select Brits to perpetuate the longest-running con game in the history of all mankind, namely—royalty! It was the most fabulous scam ever, and the British royals had done it just right. It was utterly mind-boggling how thirty million working-class people could come to worship a handful of incredibly average people and follow their every move with awe and wonder. Even more mind-boggling—the thirty million were actually silly enough to run around the world calling themselves “loyal subjects” and bragging about how they couldn’t imagine that Queen Elizabeth actually wiped her own ass after taking a dump!

But in reality none of this mattered. The simple fact was that Aunt Patricia had been spawned from the very marrow of the glorious British Isles. And, to me, she was Great Britain’s most valuable natural resource.

I would be seeing her soon, right after I cleared British Customs.

As the wheels of the six-seat Lear 55 touched down at Heathrow, I said to Danny, in a voice loud enough to cut through the two Pratt & Whitney jet engines, “I’m a superstitious man, Danny, so I’m gonna end this flight with the same words I started it with: You’re a real demented fuck!”

Danny shrugged and said, “From you, I’ll take that as a compliment. You’re not still mad at me for keeping a few Ludes off to the side, are you?”

I shook my head no. “I expect that sort of shit from you. Besides, you have this wonderful effect of reminding me how truly normal I am. I can’t thank you enough for that.”

Danny smiled and turned his palms up. “Heyyyy—what are friends for?”

I smiled a dead smile back at him. “That aside, I’m assuming you don’t have any more drugs on you, right? I’d like to pass through Customs uneventfully this time.”

“No, I’m clean—you flushed everything down the toilet.” He lifted his right hand up in the scout’s honor mode. Then he added, “I just hope you know what you’re doing with all this Nancy Reagan crap.”

“I do,” I replied confidently, but deep down I wasn’t so sure. I had to admit that I was slightly disappointed that Danny hadn’t squirreled away a few more Ludes. My left leg was still killing me, and while my mind was dead set on staying sober, the mere thought of being able to numb out the pain with even one Quaalude—just one!—was a fabulous prospect. It had been more than two days since my last Quaalude, and I could only imagine how high I’d get.

I took a deep breath and pushed the thought of Quaaludes back down below the surface. “Just remember your promise,” I snapped. “No hookers while we’re in England. You gotta be on your best behavior in front of my wife’s aunt. She’s a sharp lady and she’ll see right through your bullshit.”

“Why do I even have to meet her? I trust you to look out for me. Just tell her that if something should happen to you—God forbid—she should take instructions from me. Besides, I wouldn’t mind roaming the streets of London a bit. Maybe I’ll go down to Savile Row, get a few new custom-made suits or something. Or maybe I’ll even go down to King’s Cross and check out some of the sights there!” He winked at me.

King’s Cross was London’s infamous red-light district, where for twenty British pounds you could get a blow job from a toothless hooker with one foot in the grave and a raging case of herpes. “Funny, Danny, very funny. Just remember that you don’t have Saurel here to bail you out. Why don’t you let me hire you a bodyguard to take you around?” It was a phenomenal idea, and I was dead serious about it.

But Danny waved me off as if I had a screw loose or something. “Stop with the overprotective crap,” he exclaimed. “I’ll be juuuust fine. Don’t you worry about your friend Danny! He’s like a cat—with nine lives!”

I shook my head and rolled my eyes. But what could I do? He was a grown man, wasn’t he? Well, yes and no. But that was besides the point. I needed to be thinking about Aunt Patricia right now. In a couple of hours I would be seeing her. She always had a calming influence over me. And a little bit of calming would go a long way.

“So, love,” said Aunt Patricia, strolling arm in arm with me along a narrow tree-lined path in London’s Hyde Park, “when shall we get started on this wonderful adventure of ours?”

I smiled warmly at Patricia, then took a deep breath and relished the cool British air, which at this particular moment was thicker than a bowl of split-pea soup. To my eyes, Hyde Park was very much like New York City’s Central Park, insofar as it being a tiny slice of heaven encircled by a burgeoning metropolis. I felt right at home here. Even with the fog, by ten a.m. the sun was high enough in the sky to bring the entire landscape into high relief—turning five hundred acres of lush fields and towering trees and well-trimmed bushes and immaculately groomed horse trails into a vision so picturesque it was worthy of a postcard. The park was favored with just the appropriate number of sinuous concrete walking paths, which were all freshly paved and hadn’t a speck of litter on them. Patricia and I were walking on one of them at this very moment.

For her part, Patricia looked beautiful. But it wasn’t the sort of beauty you see in a sixty-five-year-old woman in Town & Country magazine, the supposed barometer of what it means to age gracefully. Patricia was infinitely more beautiful than that. What she had was an inner beauty, a certain heavenly warmth that radiated from every pore of her body and resonated with every word that escaped her lips. It was the beauty of perfectly still water, the beauty of cool mountain air, and the beauty of a forgiving heart. Physically, though, she was entirely average. She was a bit shorter than I and on the slender side. She had shoulder-length reddish-brown hair, light blue eyes, and fair white cheeks, which bore the expected wrinkles of a woman who’d spent the greater part of her adolescence hiding in a bomb shelter beneath her tiny flat, to avoid the Nazi Blitz. She had a tiny gap between her two front teeth that revealed itself whenever she smiled, which was often—especially when the two of us were together. This morning she wore a long plaid skirt, a cream-colored blouse with gold-colored buttons running down the front, and a plaid jacket that matched her skirt perfectly. Nothing looked expensive, but it all looked dignified.

I said to Patricia, “If possible, I’d like to go to Switzerland tomorrow. But if that’s not good for you, I’ll wait in London as long as you like. I have some business here, anyway. I have a jet waiting at Heathrow that can have us in Switzerland in under an hour. If you want, we can spend the day together there and do some sightseeing or some shopping.

“But, again, Patricia”—I paused and looked her dead in the eye—“I want you to promise me you’re going to spend at least ten thousand pounds per month out of the account, okay?”

Patricia stopped in mid-stride, unhooked her arm from mine, and placed her right hand over her heart. “My child, I wouldn’t even know where to begin to spend that much money! I have everything I need. I really do, love.”

I took her hand in mine and began walking again. “Perhaps you have everything you need, Patricia, but I’m willing to bet you don’t have everything you want. Why don’t you start by buying yourself a car and stop taking those double-decker buses everywhere? And after you get a car, you can move to a bigger apartment that’s got enough room for Collum and Anushka to sleep over. Just think how nice it would be to have extra bedrooms for your two grandkids!”

I paused for a brief moment, then added, “And within the next few weeks I’ll have the Swiss bank issue you an American Express card. You can use it to pay all your expenses. And you can use it as often as you like and spend as much as you like, and you’ll never get a bill.”

“But who will pay the bloody bill?” she asked, with confusion.

“The bank will. And—like I said—the card will have no limit. Every pound you charge will bring a smile to my face.”

Patricia smiled, and we walked in silence for a while. But it wasn’t a poisonous silence. It was the sort of silence shared by two people who’re comfortable enough not to force a conversation ahead of its logical progression. I found this woman’s company to be incredibly soothing.

My left leg was feeling somewhat better now, but that had little to do with Patricia. Activity of any sort seemed to diminish the pain—whether it was walking, playing tennis, lifting weights, or even swinging a golf club, the latter of which seemed rather odd to me, considering the obvious stress it placed on my spine. Yet the moment I stopped, the burning would start. And once my leg caught fire, there was no way to extinguish it.

Just then Patricia said, “Come sit down with me, love,” and she led me toward a small wooden bench, just off the walking path. When we reached the bench we unhooked arms and Patricia sat down beside me. “I love you like a son, Jordan, and I am only doing this because it helps you—not because of the money. One thing you’ll find as you grow older is that, sometimes, money can be more trouble than it’s worth.” She shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong, love, I’m not some silly old fool who’s lost her marbles and lives in a dream world where money doesn’t matter. I’m well aware that money matters. I grew up digging myself out of the rubble of World War Two, and I know what it’s like to wonder where your next meal is coming from. Back in those days we weren’t sure of anything. Half of London had been blown to smithereens by the Nazis, and our future was uncertain. But we had hope, and a sense of commitment to rebuilding our country. That was when I met Teddy. He was in the Royal Air Force then, a test pilot, actually. He was really quite dashing. He was one of the first people to fly the Harrier jet. Its nickname was the Flying Bedstand.” She smiled sadly.

I reached my arm around the back of the bench and gently placed my hand on her shoulder.

In a more upbeat tone, Patricia said, “Anyway, the point I was trying to make, love, is that Teddy was a man who was driven by a sense of duty, perhaps too driven. In the end, he let it get the best of him. The higher he climbed, the more uneasy he became about his station in life. Do you see what I’m saying, love?”

I nodded slowly. It wasn’t a perfect analogy, but I assumed her point had something to do with the perils of chasing a preconceived notion of what it meant to be successful. She and Teddy were now divorced.

Patricia soldiered on: “Sometimes I wonder if you let money get the best of you, love. I know you use money to control people, and there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s the way of the world, and it doesn’t make you a bad soul to try to work things in your favor. But I’m concerned that you allow money to control you—which is not all right. Money is the tool, my child, not the mason; it can help you make acquaintances but not true friends; and it might buy you a life of leisure but not a life of peace. Of course, you know I’m not judging you. That’s the last thing I’d do. None of us is perfect, and each of us is driven by our own demons. God knows I have my share.

“Anyway, getting back to this whole caper you’ve cooked up—I want you to know that I’m all for it! I find the whole thing rather exciting, in fact. I feel like a character in an Ian Fleming novel. It’s really quite racy, this whole overseas-banking business. And when you get to my age, a little bit of raciness is what keeps you young, isn’t it?”

I smiled and let out a gentle laugh. “I guess, Patricia. But as far as the raciness goes, I’ll say it again: There’s always a slight chance that some trouble might arise, at which point the raciness might get a bit racier than old Ian Fleming might’ve liked. And this won’t be in a novel. This’ll be Scotland Yard knocking at your door with a search warrant.”

I looked her directly in the eye, and I said in a tone implying the utmost seriousness, “But if it ever comes to that, Patricia—and I swear this to you—I’ll come forward in two seconds flat and say that you had no idea what was going on with any of this. I’ll say that I told you to go to the bank and give them your passport and that I promised you there was nothing wrong with it.” As I said those words I was certain they were true. After all, there was no way that any regulator on the planet would believe this innocent old lady would take part in an international money-laundering scheme. It was inconceivable.

Patricia smiled and replied, “I know that, love. Besides, it would be nice to spoil my grandchildren a bit. Perhaps they would even feel indebted enough to come visit me while I’m doing time in prison—after the bobbies have carted me away for international bank fraud, right, love?” With that, Patricia leaned forward and started laughing raucously.

I laughed right along with her, but inside I was dying. There were certain things that you just didn’t joke about; it was simply bad luck. It was like pissing in the fate god’s eye. If you did it long enough, he was certain to piss right back at you. And his urine stream was like a fucking fire hose.

But how would Aunt Patricia know that? She had never broken the law in her entire life until she met the Wolf of Wall Street! Was I really so awful a person that I was willing to corrupt a sixty-five-year-old grandma in the name of plausible deniability?

Well, there were two sides to that coin. On one side was the obvious criminality of the whole thing—corrupting a grandma; exposing her to a lifestyle she’d never needed or wanted; placing her liberty at risk; placing her reputation at risk; perhaps even causing her a stroke or some other stress-related disorder if things ever went awry.

But on the flip side—just because she’d never needed or wanted a life of wealth and extravagance didn’t mean it wasn’t better for her! It was better for her, for Chrissake! With the extra money, she’d be able to spend the twilight of her life in the lap of luxury. And (God forbid) if she ever got sick, she would have access to the finest medical care money could buy. I had no doubt that all that British nonsense about their egalitarian utopia of socialized medicine was nothing more than a bunch of happy horseshit. There had to be special medical treatment for those with a few million extra British pounds. That would be only fair, wouldn’t it? Besides, while the Brits might not be as greedy as the Americans, they weren’t fucking commies. And socialized medicine—real socialized medicine—was nothing short of a commie plot!

There were other benefits too, which, when taken together, all tipped the scale heavily in favor of recruiting the lovely Aunt Patricia into the illicit lion’s den of international bank fraud. Patricia herself had said that the sheer excitement of being part of a sophisticated money-laundering ring would keep her young, perhaps for years to come! What a pleasant thought that was! And, in truth, what were the chances of her really getting in trouble? Almost zero, I thought. Probably less than that.

Just then Patricia said, “You have this wonderful gift, love, to be engaged in two separate conversations at once. There’s one conversation that you’re having with the outside world—which, in this case, is your beloved aunt Patricia—and then there’s another conversation that you’re having with yourself, which you alone can hear.”

I let out a gentle laugh. I leaned back and spread my arms on either side of the top wooden slat, as if I were trying to let the bench absorb some of my worries. “You see a lot, Patricia. Since the day we met, when I almost drowned in a toilet bowl, I’ve always felt that you understood me better than most. Perhaps you even understand me better than I understand myself, although probably not.

“Anyway, I’ve been lost inside my own head for as long as I can remember—from the time I was a kid, maybe even as far back as nursery school.

“I remember sitting in my classroom and looking around at all the other kids and wondering why they just didn’t get it. The teacher would ask a question and I already knew the answer before she was done asking it.” I paused and looked Patricia square in the eye and said, “Please don’t take that as being cocky, Patricia. I don’t wanna come off that way. I’m just trying to be honest with you so you can really understand me. But since I was small, I was always far ahead—intellectually, I mean—of all the other kids my age. The older I got, the further ahead I became.

“And from the time I was a kid, I’ve had this bizarre internal monologue roaring through my head, which doesn’t stop—unless I’m asleep. I’m sure every person has this; it’s just that my monologue is particularly loud. And particularly troublesome. I’m constantly asking myself questions. And the problem with that is that your brain is like a computer: If you ask it a question, it’s programmed to respond, whether there’s an answer or not. I’m constantly weighing everything in my mind and trying to predict how my actions will influence events. Or maybe manipulate events are the more appropriate words. It’s like playing a game of chess with your own life. And I hate fucking chess!”

I studied Patricia’s face for some sort of response, but all I saw was a warm smile. I kept waiting for her to respond, but she didn’t. Yet by her very silence her message was crystal clear: Keep talking!

“Anyway, when I was about seven or eight I started getting terrible panic attacks. I still get them today, although now I take Xanax to quell them. But even thinking about a panic attack is enough to give me one. It’s a terrible thing to suffer from, Patricia. They’re absolutely debilitating. It’s like your heart’s coming out of your chest; like every moment of your life is its own eternity; the literal polar opposite of being comfortable in your own skin. I think the first time we met I was actually in the middle of one—although that particular one was induced by a couple a grams of coke, so it doesn’t really count. Remember?”

Patricia nodded and smiled warmly. Her expression bore not an ounce of judgment.

I plowed on: “Well, that aside, I was never able to stop my mind from racing, even when I was small. I had terrible insomnia when I was young—and I still have it today. But it’s even worse now. I used to stay up all night long and listen to my brother’s breathing, watching him sleep like a baby. I grew up in a tiny apartment, and we shared a room. I loved him more than you can possibly imagine. I have a lot of good memories about that. And now we don’t even talk anymore. Another victim of my so-called success. But that’s another story.

“Anyway, I used to dread the nighttime…or actually fear the nighttime, because I knew I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep. I used to stay up all night long and stare at a digital alarm clock that was next to my bed and multiply the minutes times the hours, mostly out of boredom but also because my mind seemed to force me into repetitive tasks. By the time I was six years old, I could do four-digit multiplication in my head faster than you could do it on a calculator. No kidding, Patricia. I can still do it today. But back then my friends hadn’t even learned to read yet! That wasn’t much conciliation, though. I used to cry like a baby when it was time to go to bed. That’s how scared I was of my panic attacks. My father would come into my room and lie down with me and try to calm me down. My mother too. But both of them worked and couldn’t stay up with me all night. So eventually I was left alone with my own thoughts. Over the years, most of the bedtime panic went away. But it never really left me. It still haunts me every time my head hits the pillow in the form of intractable insomnia—terrible, terrible insomnia.

“I’ve spent my entire life trying to fill a hole that I can’t seem to fill, Patricia. And the harder I try, the bigger it seems to get. I’ve spent more time than…”

And the words started rolling off my tongue, as I began the process of spewing out the venom that had been ripping apart my innards for as long as I could remember. Perhaps I was fighting to save my life that day or, if not that, then certainly my sanity. In retrospect, it was as good a place as any for a man to bare his soul, especially a man like me. After all, on the tiny isle of Great Britain, there was no Wolf of Wall Street and no Stratton Oakmont, both of which were an ocean away. There was just Jordan Belfort—a scared young kid—who’d gotten himself in way over his head and whose very success was fast becoming the instrument of his own destruction. The only question I had was, would I get to kill myself first—on my own terms—or would the government get me before I had the chance?

Once Patricia got me started, I couldn’t seem to stop. Every human being, after all, is possessed with the undeniable urge to confess his sins. Religions were built on such things. And kingdoms were conquered with the promise that all sins would be forgiven afterward.

So for two straight hours I confessed. I desperately tried to rid myself of the bitter bile that was wreaking havoc on my body and spirit and driving me to do things that I knew were wrong and to commit acts that I knew would ultimately lead to my own destruction.

I told her the story of my life—starting with the frustration I’d felt growing up poor. I told her of the insanity of my father and how I resented my mother for failing to protect me from his vicious temper. I told her how I knew my mother had done her best, but, somehow, I was still viewing those memories through the eyes of a child, so I couldn’t seem to completely forgive her. I told her about Sir Max and how he was always there for me when it mattered most and how, once again, it made me resent my mother for not being there like he was at those crucial moments.

And I told her how much I still loved my mother despite that and how much I respected her too, even though she’d drilled into my head that becoming a doctor was the only honorable way to make a lot of money. I explained how I rebelled against that by starting to smoke pot in sixth grade.

I told her how I overslept for my medical boards because I had done too many drugs the night before and how as a result of that I ended up in dental school instead of medical school. I told her the story of my first day of dental school, when the dean got up before the incoming class and explained how the Golden Age of Dentistry was over and if you were becoming a dentist to make a lot of money, then you should quit now and save yourself the time and aggravation…and how I got up right then and there and never went back.

And from there I explained how that led me into the meat-and-seafood business and ultimately to Denise. It was at this point when my eyes began to well up with tears. With great sadness, I said, “…and we would get down on our hands and knees and roll up change to pay for shampoo. That’s how poor we were. When I lost all my money, I thought Denise would leave me. She was young and beautiful, and I was a failure. I was never all that confident with women, Patricia, in spite of what you or anyone else might think. When I first started making money in the meat business, I assumed it would somehow make up for that. And then when I met Denise, well, I was convinced that she loved me for my car. I had this little red Porsche back then, which was a pretty big deal for a kid in his early twenties, especially a kid from a poor family.

“I tell you the truth—when I first laid eyes on Denise I was absolutely blown away. She was like a vision. Absolutely gorgeous! My heart literally skipped a beat, Patricia. I was driving my truck that day and was trying to sell meat to the owner of the haircutting shop Denise worked at. Anyway, I chased her around the hair salon and asked her for her phone number a hundred times, but she wouldn’t give it to me. So I raced home, picked up my Porsche, and drove back and waited outside her shop to make sure she saw it when she came out!” At this point I flashed Patricia an embarrassed smile. “Can you imagine? What kind of man with any self-confidence does that? What a fucking embarrassment I was! Anyway, what’s really ironic is that since I started Stratton, every kid in America thinks it’s their fucking birthright to own a Ferrari by the age of twenty-one.” I shook my head and rolled my eyes.

Patricia smiled and said, “I suspect, love, that you’re not the first man to see a pretty girl and run home to get his fancy car. And I also suspect that you won’t be the last. In fact, not far from here there’s a section of the park called Rotten Row, where young men used to parade their horses around in front of the young ladies in the hopes of getting inside their bloomers one day.” Patricia chuckled at her own statement, then added, “You didn’t invent that game, love.”

I smiled graciously. “Well, I’ll give you that, but I still feel like a bit of a fool, anyway. As far as the rest of the story goes…you already know it. But the worst part is that when I left Denise for Nadine, it was all over the newspapers. What a fucking nightmare that must’ve been for Denise! I mean, she was a twenty-five-year-old girl who was dumped for some young hot model. And the newspapers painted her to be some old socialite who’d lost her sex appeal—like she was being traded in for a girl who still had some life left in her! That kinda stuff happens all the time on Wall Street, Patricia.

“My point is that Denise was young and beautiful too! Don’t you see the irony in that? Most rich men wait to trade in their first wives. I know you’re a smart lady, so you know exactly what I’m talking about. That’s the way of things on Wall Street, and, as you say, I didn’t invent that game. But everything in my life became accelerated. I missed my twenties and thirties and went straight to my forties. There are things that happen during those years that build a man’s character. Certain struggles, Patricia, that every man needs to go through to find out what it means to really be a man. I never went through that. I’m an adolescent inside a man’s body. I was born with certain gifts—from God—but I didn’t have the emotional maturity to use them in the right way. I was an accident waiting to happen.

“God gave me half the equation—the ability to lead people and to figure things out in ways that most people can’t. Yet He didn’t bless me with the restraint and patience to do the right thing with it.

“Anyway, everywhere Denise went, people would point at her and say, ‘Oh, that’s the one that Jordan Belfort dumped for the Miller Lite girl.’ I tell you the truth, Patricia, I should’ve been horsewhipped for what I did to Denise. I don’t care if it’s Wall Street or Main Street. What I did was in-fucking-excusable. I left a kind, beautiful girl, who’d stuck with me through thick and thin, who bet her future on me. And when her winning ticket finally came in—I canceled it on her. I’m gonna burn in hell for that one, Patricia. And I deserve to.”

I took a deep breath. “You can’t imagine how hard I tried to justify what I did, to place some blame on Denise. But I never could. Some things are just inherently wrong, and you can look at them from a thousand different angles but, at the end of the day, you always come to the same conclusion, which—in my case—is that I’m a dirty rotten scoundrel, who left his loyal first wife for a longer set of legs and a slightly prettier face.

“Listen, Patricia—I know it might be hard for you to be impartial in this matter, but I suspect that a woman of your character can look at things the way they oughta be looked at. The simple fact is that I’ll never be able to trust Nadine the way I trusted Denise. And no one will ever be able to convince me otherwise. Perhaps forty years from now, when we’re old and gray, well, then maybe I’ll consider trusting her. But that’s still a long shot.”

Patricia said, “I couldn’t agree with you more, love. Trusting any woman you met under those circumstances would require quite a leap of faith. But there’s no use torturing yourself over it. You can spend your whole life looking at Nadine through narrowed eyes and wondering ‘what if?’ In the end you might turn the whole thing into a self-fulfilling prophecy. When it’s all said and done, it’s the energy we send out into the universe that often comes back to us. That’s a universal law, love.

“But on a separate note, you know what they say about trust: In order to trust someone, you need to trust yourself. Are you trustworthy, love?”

Oh, boy! That was quite a question! I ran it through the mental computer and didn’t like the answer the computer spit back at me. I rose from the bench and said, “I have to stand, Patricia. My left leg is killing me from sitting so long. Why don’t we walk for a while? Let’s head toward the hotel. I want to see Speaker’s Corner. Maybe someone will be standing on a soapbox bashing John Major. He’s your prime minister, right?”

“Yes, love,” replied Patricia. She rose from the bench and hooked her arm in mine. We walked along the path, heading toward the hotel. Matter-of-factly, she said, “And then after we hear what the speaker has to say you can answer my last question, okay, love?”

This woman was too much! But I had to love her! My confessor! “All right, Patricia, all right! The answer to your question is: no! I’m a fucking liar and a cheater and I sleep with prostitutes the way most people put on socks—especially when I’m fucked up on drugs, which is about half the time. But even when I’m not high on drugs, I’m still a cheat. So there! Now you know. Are you happy?”

Patricia laughed at my little outburst, then shocked the hell out of me by saying, “Oh, love, everyone knows about the prostitutes—even your mother-in-law, my sister. It’s somewhat of a legend. I think in Nadine’s case, she’s decided to take the good with the bad. But what I was really asking was if you ever had an affair with another woman, a woman you had feelings for.”

“No, of course not!” I shot back with great confidence. And then, with less confidence, I took a moment to search my memory to see if I was telling the truth. I had never really cheated on Nadine, had I?…No, I really hadn’t. Not in the traditional sense of the word. What a happy thought Patricia had placed in my head! What a wonderful lady she was!

Still, this subject was something I would just as soon avoid, so I began talking about my back…and how the chronic pain was driving me insane…. I told her about the surgeries, which hadonly made it worse…and I explained how I’d tried taking narcotics—everything from Vicodin to morphine—and how they made me nauseous and depressed…so I took antinausea drugs and Prozac to offset the nausea and depression…but the nausea drugs gave me a headache, so I took Advil, which upset my stomach, so I took Zantac, to combat my stomachache, which raised my liver enzymes. Then I told her how the Prozac affected my sex drive and made my mouth dry…so I took Salagen to stimulate my salivary glands and yohimbe bark for the impotence…but in the end I stopped taking those too. Ultimately, I explained, I had always come back to Quaaludes, which seemed to be the only drug that truly killed the pain.

We were just approaching Speaker’s Corner when I said sadly, “I fear that I’m completely addicted to drugs now, Patricia, and that even if my back didn’t hurt I still wouldn’t be able to stop taking them. I’m starting to have blackouts now, where I do things that I can’t remember. It’s pretty scary stuff, Patricia. It’s like part of your life has just evaporated—poof!—gone forever. But my point is that I flushed all my Quaaludes down the toilet and now I’m dying for one. I’ve actually been thinking about having my assistant send my driver over here on the Concorde, just so I can have some Ludes. That’ll cost me about twenty thousand dollars, for twenty Ludes. Twenty thousand dollars! But I’m still thinking about doing it.

“What can I say, Patricia? I’m a drug addict. I’ve never admitted that to anyone before, but I know it’s true. And everyone around me, including my own wife, is scared to confront me about it. In one way or another they all rely on me for their living, so they enable me. And cajole me.

“Anyway, that’s my story. It’s not a pretty picture. I live the most dysfunctional life on the planet. I’m a successful failure. I’m thirty-one going on sixty. Just how much longer I’ll make it on this earth, only God knows. But I do love my wife. And I have feelings for my baby girl that I never thought I was capable of. In a way, she’s what keeps me going. Chandler. She’s everything to me. I swore I would stop doing drugs after she was born, but who was I kidding? I’m incapable of stopping, at least for very long.

“I wonder what Chandler’ll think when she finds out that her daddy is a drug addict? I wonder what she’ll think when her daddy winds up in jail? I wonder what she’ll think when she’s old enough to read all the articles and finds out about her daddy’s exploits with hookers? I dread that day, Patricia, I sincerely do. And I have no doubt that day will come. It’s all very sad, Patricia. Very, very sad…”

And, with that, I was done. I had spilled my guts like never before. Did I feel any better for it? Alas, not really. I still felt exactly the same. And my left leg was still killing me, in spite of the walking.

I waited for some sort of sage response from Patricia, a response which never came. I guess that’s not what confessors are all about. All Patricia did was hold my arm tighter, perhaps pull me a little closer to her, to let me know that—in spite of it all—she still loved me and that she always would.

There was no one speaking at Speaker’s Corner. Most of the action, Patricia told me, occurred on the weekends. But that was appropriate. On this particular Wednesday, enough words were spoken in Hyde Park to fill a lifetime. And for a brief instant, the Wolf of Wall Street became Jordan Belfort again.

But it was short-lived. Up ahead in the distance, I could see the Dorchester Hotel rising up nine stories above the bustling streets of London.

And the one thought that occupied my mind was what time the Concorde would be leaving the United States—and how long it would take to arrive in Britain.

^{CHAPTER 16} RELAPSE BEHAVIOR

If I earn a million dollars a week and the average American earns a thousand dollars a week, then when I spend twenty thousand dollars on something it’s the equivalent of the average American spending twenty dollars on something, right?

It was an hour later, and I was sitting in the Presidential Suite in the Dorchester Hotel when that fabulous rationalization came bubbling up into my brain. In fact, the whole thing made so much sense that I picked up the phone, dialed Janet, woke her up out of a dead sleep, and calmly said, “I want you to send George over to Alan Chemical-tob’s house and have him pick up twenty Ludes for me, then have him fly them over on the next Concorde, okay?” Only as an afterthought did it occur to me that Bayside was five hours behind London, which meant it was four a.m., Janet time.

But my twinge of guilt was short-lived; after all, it wasn’t the first time I’d done something like this to her, and I had a sneaky suspicion it wouldn’t be the last. Anyway, I was paying her five times the going rate for personal assistants, so in essence hadn’t I purchased the right to wake her up? Or, if not that, hadn’t I earned the right to wake her up through the love and kindness I’d extended toward her, like the father she never had? (Another wonderful rationalization!)

Obviously so—because, without missing a beat, Janet was now wide awake and eager to please. She cheerfully responded, “No problem; I’m pretty sure the next Concorde leaves early tomorrow morning. I’ll make sure George is on it. But I don’t have to send him to Alan’s house. I have an emergency stash for you right here in my apartment.” She paused for a brief instant, then added, “Where are you calling me from, the hotel room?”

Before I answered yes, I found myself wondering what sort of conclusions could be drawn about a man who could call his assistant and ask her to use supersonic transport to satiate his raging drug habit and his obvious desire to self-destruct and not even get a raised eyebrow in return. It was a troubling thought, so I chose not to dwell on it very long. I said to Janet, “Yeah, I’m in the room. Where else would I be calling you from, numnuts, one of those red phone booths in Piccadilly Circus?”

“Fuck you!” she shot back. “I was just wondering.” Then she changed her tone to one of great hope and asked, “Do you like the room better than the one in Switzerland?”

“Yeah—it’s much nicer, sweetie. It’s not exactly my taste, but everything is new and beautiful. You did good.”

I paused and waited for a response, but none came. Christ! She wanted a full-blown description of the room—her vicarious thrill of the day. What a pain in the ass she was! I smiled into the phone and said, “Anyway, like I was saying, the room is really nice. According to the hotel manager it’s decorated in the British traditional fashion—whatever the fuck that means! But the bedroom’s really nice, especially the bed. It’s got a huge canopy with lots of blue fabric everywhere. The Brits must like blue, I guess. And they also must like pillows, because the room has about a thousand of them.

“Anyway, the rest of the place is stuffed with all sorts of British crap. There’s a huge dining-room table with one of those sterling-silver candelabras on it. It reminds me of Liberace. Danny’s room is on the opposite side of the suite from mine, but he’s gallivanting around the streets of London right now—like that song ‘Werewolves of London.’

“And that’s it. No other info to relay, other than my precise location, which I’m sure you’d like to know too. So I’ll tell you before you ask: I’m standing on the room’s balcony, and I’m looking at Hyde Park and talking to you. I can’t really see that much, though. It’s too foggy. Are you happy now?”

“Uh-huh,” was all she said.

“How much is the room? I didn’t look when I checked in.”

“Nine thousand pounds per night, which is about thirteen thousand dollars. It sounds like it’s worth it, though, right?”

I took a moment to consider her question. It was a mystery to me why I felt compelled to always book the Presidential Suite, no matter how ludicrous the price. I was certain that it had something to do with watching Richard Gere do it in the movie Pretty Woman, which was one of my all-time favorites. But it was deeper than that. There was this feeling I got whenever I walked up to the check-in counter of a fancy hotel and uttered those magic words: “My name is Jordan Belfort, and I’m here to check into the Presidential Suite.” Well—I knew it was because I was an insecure little bastard, but what the hell!

With sarcasm, I said, “Thanks for reminding me of the exchange rate, Ms. World Banker. I’d almost forgotten. Anyway, the room’s definitely a fucking bargain at thirteen Gs a night. Although I really think it should come with a slave for that price, don’t you?”

“I’ll try to find you one,” said Janet. “But either way I got you a late checkout for tomorrow, so we only have to pay for one night. See how I’m always watching your money? By the way, how’s Nadine’s aunt?”

Instantly I plunged into paranoia mode—calculating the possibility of our phone conversation being bugged. Would the FBI have the audacity to tap Janet’s phone? No, it was inconceivable! There was a heavy cost to tapping someone’s phone and nothing meaningful was ever discussed on this line, unless of course the feds were intent on busting me for being a sexual deviant or a rip-roaring drug addict. But what about the British? Was there a possibility that MI6 was trailing me for a crime I hadn’t even committed yet? No, also inconceivable! They had their hands full with the IRA, didn’t they? Why would they give a shit about the Wolf of Wall Street and his devilish plans to corrupt a retired schoolteacher? They would not. Satisfied our conversation was secure, I replied, “She’s doing great. I just dropped her off at her flat. That’s what they call apartments here, Janet.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” said the obnoxious one.

“Oh, excuse me. I was unaware that you were such a world-fucking-traveler. Anyway, I need to stay in London an extra day. I have some business here. So book the hotel for an extra night and make sure the plane is waiting for me at Heathrow on Friday morning. And tell the pilot it’s gonna be a same-day turnaround. Patricia’s going back that afternoon, okay?”

With typical Janet sarcasm: “I’ll do whatever you say, boss”—why always such contempt with this word, boss?—“but I don’t see why you feel the need to bullshit me about why you’re staying in London an extra day.”

How had she known? Was it really that obvious I wanted to get Luded out in privacy—outside the prying eyes of the Swiss bankers? No, it was just that Janet knew me so well. She was sort of like the Duchess in that respect. But since I didn’t lie to Janet as much as to my wife, she was that much better at anticipating when I was up to no good.

Still, I felt compelled to lie. “I’m not even gonna dignify that with a response. But as long as you brought up the subject, I might as well put you to good use. It just so happens that there’s this really hot nightclub in London called Annabelle’s. It’s supposed to be impossible to get into. Get me the best table in the house for tomorrow night, and tell them I want three bottles of Cristal waiting for me on ice. If you have any problems—”

“Please don’t insult me,” interrupted Janet. “Your table will be waiting for you, Sir Belfort. Just don’t forget that I know where you come from, and Bayside isn’t exactly famous for its royalty. Do you need me to find you anything else or are you all set for tomorrow evening?”

“Ooooh, you’re such a little devil, Janet! You know, I was really trying to turn over a new leaf in the female department, but since you put the idea in my head—why don’t you order two Blue Chips, one for me and one for Danny. Or, now that I think about it, you better make that three—just in case one’s a bust! You never know what’s gonna walk through the door in these foreign countries.

“Anyway, I’m off! I’m going downstairs to catch a quick workout, and then I’m heading over to Bond Street to do some shopping. That should make my father happy when he gets the bill next month! Now, quick—before I hang up—remind me of what a great boss I am and tell me how much you love me and miss me!”

Tonelessly: “You’re the greatest boss in the whole wide world and I love you and miss you and can’t live without you.”

“Well, that’s what I thought,” I replied knowingly. Then I hung up the phone in her ear without saying good-bye.

^{CHAPTER 17} THE MASTER FORGER

Precisely thirty-six hours later, our chartered Learjet screamed and roared like a military fighter as it took off out of Heathrow and made its way into the Friday morning sky. Aunt Patricia was sitting to my left—a look of sheer terror frozen on her face. She was gripping the armrests so tightly her knuckles had turned white. I looked at her for thirty seconds, and she blinked only once. I felt a twinge of guilt over her obvious discomfort, but what could I do? The simple fact was that climbing inside a fifteen-foot-long, hollowed-out bullet and being shot through the air at five hundred miles per hour wasn’t most people’s idea of fun.

Danny was facing me, with his back to the cockpit. He would be making the trip to Switzerland flying backward, which was something I’d always found disconcerting. But, like most things in life, it didn’t seem to bother Danny one iota. In fact, despite the noise and vibrations, he had already fallen asleep and was in his customary position, with his mouth wide open and his head tilted back and his enormous teeth blazing away.

I won’t deny that this incredible ability he had—to be able to fall asleep at the drop of a dime—drove me absolutely bonkers. How could you just stop your thoughts from roaring through your head? It seemed illogical! Well—whatever. It was his gift and my curse.

With frustration in my heart, I leaned my head toward the tiny oval window and banged my head against it with a gentle thud. Then I pressed my nose against the window and watched the city of London grow smaller and smaller beneath me. At this time of morning—seven a.m.—a dense layer of soupy fog still sat upon the city like a wet blanket, and all I could see was the shaft of Big Ben, rising up from the fog like an enormous erection in desperate need of a morning romp. After the last thirty-six hours, the mere thought of an erection and a romp was enough to send my frazzled nerves into a complete tailspin.

All at once I found myself missing my wife. Nadine! The lovely Duchess! Where was she right now, when I needed her most? How wonderful it would be to lay my head upon her warm, soft bosom and draw some power from it! But, no, I could not. At this particular moment she was an ocean away—probably having dark premonitions over my recent sins and plotting her revenge.

I kept staring out the window, trying to make heads or tails of the events of the last thirty-six hours. I genuinely loved my wife. So why on earth had I done all those terrible things? Was it the drugs that made me do them? Or was it the very acts themselves that made me do the drugs so I would feel less guilt about them? It was the eternal question, one of those chicken-and-the-egg things—enough to drive a man crazy.

Just then the pilot executed a sharp left turn and brilliant rays of morning sunlight came exploding off the right wingtip, streaming into the cabin, nearly knocking me out of my seat. I turned away from the blazing light and looked at Aunt Patricia. Ahhh, poor Patricia! She was still frozen like a statue, still gripping the armrests, and still in a state of Lear-induced catatonia. I felt I owed her a few words of comfort, so in a voice loud enough to cut through the screaming engines, I yelled, “What do you think, Aunt Patricia? It’s a little different than flying commercial. You can really feel the turns, right?”

I turned to Danny and took a moment to regard him—still sleeping, he was! Unbelievable! That rat bastard!

I considered today’s schedule and what goals I needed to accomplish. Insofar as Patricia was concerned, that would be easy. It was just a matter of getting her in and out of the bank as quickly as possible. She would smile at the closed-circuit cameras, sign a few papers, give them a copy of her passport, and that would be that. I would have her back in London by four o’clock this afternoon. In a week she would get her credit card and start reaping the benefits of being my nominee. Good for her!

Once Patricia was taken care of, I would have a quick meeting with Saurel, tie up a few loose ends, and work out a rough timetable for smuggling over the cash. I would start with five million, or maybe a million more, and then work my way up from there. I had a few people back in the States who’d do the actual smuggling, but I would focus on that when I got back home.

With a little bit of luck, I could get all my business done today and catch an early flight out of Switzerland first thing tomorrow morning. What a happy thought! I loved my wife! And then I would get to see Chandler and hold her in my arms. Well, what was there to say to that? Chandler was perfect! In spite of the fact that all she did was sleep and poop and drink lukewarm baby formula, I could tell that she was going to be a genius one day! And she was absolutely gorgeous! She was looking more and more like Nadine every day. That was perfect, just what I’d hoped for.

Still, I needed to keep my thoughts on today, especially my meeting with Roland Franks. I’d given a lot of thought to what Saurel had said, and I had no doubt that a man like Roland Franks could be a windfall. It was hard to imagine what I could accomplish if I had someone in my corner who was an expert at generating documents that supported a notion of plausible deniability. The most obvious benefit would be using my overseas accounts to do Regulation S business—allowing me to circumvent the two-year holding period of Rule 144. If Roland could create shell companies that gave off the sanctified odor of legitimate foreign entities, it would allow me to use Regulation S to fund some of my own companies, the most important of which was Dollar Time. It needed a cash infusion of $2 million, and if Roland had the ability to generate the necessary documents, then I could use my own smuggled money to fund Dollar Time. That would be one of the main topics of discussion.

How odd it was: As much as I despised Kaminsky, it was he who’d actually led me to Jean Jacques Saurel. It was a classic example of duds leading to studs.

With that thought, I shut my eyes and pretended to sleep. Soon enough, I’d be back in Switzerland.

The offices of Roland Franks occupied the first floor of a narrow red-brick building that rose up three stories above a quiet cobblestone street. On either side of the street an assortment of mom-and-pop shops were open for business, although despite it being mid-afternoon, they didn’t seem to be doing much of it.

I had decided to meet with Roland Franks alone, which seemed like the prudent thing to do—considering the topics to be discussed could land me in jail for a couple of thousand years.

But I refused to let such a morbid consideration cast a shadow over my get-together with my prospective Master Forger. Yes—Master Forger. For some inexplicable reason I couldn’t seem to get those two words out my head. Master Forger! Master Forger! The possibilities were…endless! So many devilish strategies to employ! So many laws to be circumvented under the impenetrable veil of plausible deniability!

And things with Aunt Patricia had gone off without a hitch. That was a good omen. In fact, at this very moment she was on her way back to London, hopefully feeling more comfortable on the Learjet—after consuming five shots of Irish whiskey over lunch. And Danny…well, he was another story. The last I’d seen of him he was in Saurel’s office, listening to a discourse on the frisky nature of the female Swiss animal.

In any event, the hallway leading to my Master Forger’s office was dim and musty, and I couldn’t help but feel slightly saddened over the austere surroundings. Of course, Roland’s official title wasn’t Master Forger or anything like that. In fact, I would venture to guess that I was the first human being to ever put those two words together to characterize a Swiss trustee.

On its own, the title trustee was completely innocuous and had no negative connotations whatsoever. From a legal perspective, a trustee was nothing more than a fancy title for any individual who was legally obligated to look out for another person’s affairs—to be trusted, so to speak. In the United States, it was the stuff of wealthy WASPs, who used trustees to watch over the inheritances, or trust funds, that they had set up for their idiot sons and daughters. Most trustees operated under strict guidelines that had been set for them by the parent WASPs on how much money could be dispersed and when. If all went according to plan, the idiots wouldn’t get their hands on the bulk of their inheritances until they were old enough to accept the fact that they were truly idiots. Then they would still have enough money left over to live out the rest of their WASP lives in typical WASP fashion.

But Roland Franks was not that sort of trustee. His guidelines would be set by me, to benefit me. He would be responsible for handling all my paperwork and for filing any official forms that needed to be filed with various foreign governments. He would create official-looking documents that would justify the movement of money as well as equity investments in entities in which I maintained secret control. He would then disperse money, per my instructions, in any country I chose.

I opened the door to Roland’s office and there he was: my wonderful Master Forger. There was no reception area, just a large, well-appointed office with mahogany-covered walls and a lush maroon carpet. He was leaning against the edge of a large oak desk that was covered with countless papers…and he was a real Swiss tub o’ lard! He was about my height, but he had a tremendous gut and a mischievous smile on his face that so much as said, “I spend the greater part of my day figuring out ways to cheat various world governments.”

Just behind him, a large walnut bookcase rose up from the floor and touched the ceiling; it was a good twelve feet high. The bookcase was filled with hundreds of leather-bound books, all the same size, all the same thickness, and all the same dark-brown color. But each book had a different name on it, which was inscribed in gold-colored letters that ran down the side of the book, along its binding. I had seen books like this in the United States. They were official corporate books, the ones you received each time you formed a new corporation. Each one contained a corporate charter, blank stock certificates, a corporate seal, and so forth. Leaning against the bookcase was an old-fashioned library ladder with wheels at the bottom.

Roland Franks walked up to me and grabbed my hand before I even had a chance to lift it. He started shaking it vigorously. With a great smile he said, “Ahhh, Jordan, Jordan—you and I must become fast friends! I have heard so much about you from Jean Jacques. He tells me of your wonderful past adventures and of your future plans. There is so much to discuss and so little time, eh?”

I nodded eagerly, a bit overwhelmed by his warmth and girth, but I instantly liked him. There was something very honest about him, very forthright. He was a man who could be trusted.

Roland led me over to a black leather couch and gestured for me to take a seat, then he sat down on a matching black leather club chair. He removed an unfiltered cigarette from a sterling-silver case and tapped it on its end, to pack in the tobacco. From inside his pants pocket he pulled a matching sterling-silver lighter, ignited it, and tilted his head to the side to avoid being singed by the nine-inch butane flame. Then he took a deep pull from the cigarette.

I watched in silence. Finally, after a good ten seconds, he exhaled, but only a drop of smoke came out. Incredible! Where had it gone?

I was about to ask him when he said, “You must tell me about your flight over from the United States. It is the stuff of legend, as you would say.” He winked at me. Then he turned his palms up and shrugged, and said, “But me—ehhh—I am but a simple man, and there is only one woman in the world for me: my lovely wife!” He rolled his eyes. “Anyway, I have heard much about your brokerage firm and all the companies you own. So much for a man as young as you! I would say you are still very much a boy and yet…”

The Master Forger kept going on and on, talking about how young and wonderful I was, but I found it hard to follow him. I was too busy trying to follow his enormous jowls, which seemed to be swaying back and forth like a sailboat on a rough ocean. Roland had intelligent brown eyes, a low forehead, and a fat nose. His skin was very white, and his head seemed to sit directly upon his chest without the benefit of a neck. His hair was dark brown, almost black, and he wore it combed straight back over his round skull. And my first impression had been right: There was a certain inner warmth that this man exuded, a joie de vivre of someone completely comfortable in his own skin, despite the fact that there was enough of it to carpet Switzerland.

“…and so, my friend, that is the long and short of it. After all, appearances are what make the difference in things. Or as you would say, it is about the dotting of the i’s and the crossing of the t’s, no?” asked the Master Forger with a smile.

In spite of catching only the tail end of what he’d said, the gist of it was clear: The paper trail was everything. Speaking more woodenly than usual, I replied, “I couldn’t agree with you more, Roland. I have always prided myself on being a careful man, a man who is realistic about the world in which he operates. After all, men such as ourselves can’t afford to be careless. That is a luxury of women and children.” My tone dripped with sagacity, but deep down I was hoping he had never seen The Godfather. I felt a bit guilty over stealing some of Don Corleone’s thunder, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. The movie was packed with such terrific dialogue that plagiarizing it only seemed natural. In a way, I lived my life very much like Don Corleone—didn’t I? I never talked on the phone; I kept my circle of confidants to a handful of old and trusted friends; I paid off politicians and police officers; I had Biltmore and Monroe Parker paying me monthly tributes…and countless other things too. But, unlike me, Don Corleone didn’t have a rip-roaring drug habit, nor could he be so easily manipulated by a gorgeous blonde. Well, those were my Achilles’ heels, and no man could be perfect.

Apparently not picking up on my plagiarism, he replied, “That is a most wonderful insight for a man your age. And I couldn’t agree with you more. Carelessness is a luxury no serious man can afford. And today that shall be something we pay great attention to. As you will see, my friend, I can serve many functions for you and wear many hats. Of course, my more mundane functions—such as keeping track of paperwork and filling out corporate forms—I trust you are already familiar with. So we will move past those. The question is: Where shall we start? What is on your mind, my young friend? Please tell me, and I will help you.”

I smiled and said, “I was told by Jean Jacques that you are a man who can be trusted completely, that you are the best at what you do. So rather than beat around the bush, I will operate under the assumption that you and I will be doing business together for many years to come.”

I paused for a brief moment, waiting for Roland’s obligatory nod and smile in response to my patronizing statement. And while I was never a great advocate of patronizing statements…since this was the first time I’d ever been face-to-face with a true Master Forger…well, it just seemed like the appropriate thing to do.

As expected, Roland turned up the corners of his mouth and nodded deferentially. Then he took another enormous pull from his cigarette and started blowing perfectly round smoke rings. How beautiful! I thought. They were flawless circles of light-gray smoke, about two inches in diameter, and they seemed to float effortlessly through the air.

I smiled and said, “Those are very fine smoke rings, Roland. Maybe you can shed some light on why Swiss people love smoking so much. I mean—don’t get me wrong—I’m all for smoking if that’s what turns you on. In fact, my father is one of the all-time great smokers, so I respect it. But the Swiss seem to take it to a different level. Why is that?”

Roland shrugged and said, “Thirty years ago it was the same in America. But your government feels compelled to stick its nose in places where it does not belong—even into the right of an individual to partake in a simple manly pleasure. They have instituted a propaganda war against smoking, which, thankfully, has not spread to this side of the Atlantic. How bizarre it is for a government to decide what and what not a man might put into his own body. What will be next, I wonder, food?” He smiled broadly and laughed, then patted his fat stomach with great relish. “If that day comes, my friend, I will surely put a pistol in my mouth and pull the trigger!”

I let out a gentle laugh and shook my head and waved my hand in the air, as if to say, “Oh, come on! You’re not really that fat!” Then I said, “Well, you’ve answered my question, and what you say makes a lot of sense. The United States government is overly intrusive in all aspects of life, which is the exact reason I’m sitting here today. But I still have many concerns about doing business in Switzerland, most of them stemming from my lack of knowledge about your world—meaning overseas banking—and that makes me extremely nervous. I’m a firm believer, Roland, that knowledge is power and that in a situation like this, where the stakes are so incredibly high, a lack of knowledge is a recipe for disaster.

“So I must become more knowledgeable. Everyone, at some point, needs a mentor, and I look to you for just that. I have no idea how I’m supposed to operate within your jurisdiction. For example, what things are considered taboo? Where is the line of good judgment? What is considered recklessness and what is considered prudence? These are things that are very important for me to know, Roland, things I must know if I’m to steer clear of trouble. I need to understand all your banking laws down to the very letter. If possible, I would like to look at past indictments, to see what other people have gotten in trouble for and what mistakes they’ve made, and then to make sure I don’t repeat them. I’m a student of history, Roland, and I’m a firm believer that he who doesn’t study the mistakes of the past is doomed to repeat them.” This was something I had done—looking through old indictments—when I started Stratton, and it had been invaluable.

Roland said, “That is another wonderful insight, my young friend, and I will be more than happy to gather some information for you. But perhaps I can shed some light on things for you right now. You see, virtually all problems Americans run into with Swiss banking have little to do with what happens on this side of the Atlantic. Once your money is safely here, I will disappear it into a dozen different corporations without raising any red flags, outside the prying eyes of your government. I understand from Jean Jacques that Mrs. Mellor was at the bank this morning, yes?”

I nodded. “Yes, and she’s already on her way back to England. But I have a copy of her passport if you need it.” I tapped my hand over my left suit-jacket pocket, to let him know it was on my person.

“That is excellent,” said Roland, “quite excellent. If you would be kind enough to provide me with it, I will keep it on file with each corporation we form. On a separate note, please understand that Jean Jacques shares information with me only under the authorization you granted him. Otherwise, he would have never mentioned a word about Mrs. Mellor presenting herself at the bank. And I would like to add that my relationship with Jean Jacques is one-way. I will tell him nothing of our business unless you instruct me to.

“You see, I would strongly recommend that you do not put all your eggs in one basket. Do not misunderstand me, though: Union Bancaire is a fine institution, and I recommend that you keep the bulk of your money there. But there are banks in other countries as well—Luxembourg and Liechtenstein, just to name two—that will serve a useful purpose to us. Layering your transactions in many different countries will create a web so tangled it would be nearly impossible for any single government to untangle it.

“Each country has its own set of laws. So what might be penal in Switzerland might very well be legal in Liechtenstein. Depending on what sort of transaction you are contemplating, we would form separate corporate entities for each part of the transaction, doing only what is legal in each particular country. But I am painting broad strokes here. The possibilities are much greater than that.”

Incredible! I thought. A true Master Forger! After a few moments of silence I said, “Perhaps you can give me a brief education on the ins and outs of things. I can’t begin to tell you how much more comfortable that would make me. I mean, there are obvious benefits to doing business in a corporate name—whether it be in the United States or Switzerland—but what I’m interested in are the less obvious benefits.” I smiled and leaned back deeper in my seat and crossed my legs. It was the sort of posture that so much as said, “Take your time in telling me; I’m in no rush.”

“Of course, my friend; now we are getting to the heart of matters. Each of those corporations is a bearer corporation, meaning that there is no actual paperwork stating who the owner is. In theory, whoever possesses the actual stock certificates—the so-called bearer—is deemed the rightful owner. There are two ways to secure your ownership in a corporation such as this. The first is take personal possession of the stock certificates—to be the physical bearer of them. In that case, it would be your responsibility to find a safe place to keep them, perhaps in a safe-deposit box in the United States or something like that. The second way would be to open a numbered safe-deposit box in Switzerland and keep the certificates there. You alone would have access to this box. And unlike a Swiss bank account, a safe-deposit box is truly numbered; there will be no name attached to it.

“If you choose that route, then I would suggest that you lease a box for a term of fifty years and pay the entire fee up front. Under those circumstances there would be no way for any government to gain access to that box. Only you—and perhaps your wife, if you so desire—would be aware of its existence. And if I could offer you a piece of advice, I would recommend that you do not inform your wife. Instead, provide me with instructions on how to contact her—heaven forbid anything should ever happen to you. You have my express word that she will be notified immediately.

“But, please, my friend, do not take my statement as any indication that I question your wife’s trustworthiness. I’m sure she is a fine young lady, and from what I hear, very beautiful as well. It’s just that it would not be the first time a disgruntled wife led an eager IRS agent to a place he were better not led.”

I took a moment to consider his statement, and it sounded awfully reminiscent of the ghosts of six million slaughtered Jews roaming the streets of Zurich and Geneva, trying to find their Swiss bankers. Although, I had to admit, Roland seemed to be the sort who would stand up and do the right thing. But how could I be sure of that? As the ultimate Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, who should know better than me that appearances could be deceiving? Perhaps I would tell my father or, better still, hand him a sealed envelope with the explicit instructions that it should be opened only in case of my untimely demise—which, given my penchant for flying stoned and scuba diving during blackouts, seemed like a distinct possibility.

I chose to keep all those stray thoughts to myself. “I prefer the second option—for many different reasons. And in spite of the fact that I’ve never received a subpoena from the Justice Department, it still makes sense to keep all my documents outside their jurisdiction. As you’re probably aware, all my legal problems are civil in nature, not criminal, which is exactly the way it should be. I’m a legitimate businessman, Roland. I want you to know that. First and foremost, I always try to do things right. But hard as I try, the simple fact is that many of the U.S. securities laws are entirely ambiguous, with no absolute right or absolute wrong. I tell you the truth, Roland: In many cases—most cases, actually—what violates the law is more a matter of opinion than anything else.” What a crock of shit! But it sounded awfully good. “So, occasionally, something that I thought was perfectly legal ended up biting me in the butt. It’s kind of unfair, but that’s the way it is. Anyway, I would say that most of my problems are directly related to poorly written securities laws, laws that are designed for selective enforcement against individuals the government feels like persecuting.”

Roland laughed raucously. “Oh, my friend, you are too much! What a wonderful way to look at things. I don’t think I have ever heard someone state their outlook in such a compelling manner. Most excellent that was—most excellent!”

I chuckled and said, “Well, from a man like you I take that as a great compliment. I won’t deny that from time to time, like any businessman, I step over the line and take a risk or two. But they’re always calculated risks—heavily calculated, I might add. And every risk I take is always supported by an airtight paper trail, which supports a notion of plausible deniability. You’re familiar with the term, I assume?”

Roland nodded his head slowly, obviously enthralled with my ability to rationalize the breaking of every securities law ever invented. What he wasn’t aware of was that the SEC was in the process of inventing new ones to try to stop me.

I soldiered on: “I figured you’d be. Anyway, when I opened up my brokerage firm five years ago, a very smart man gave me some very smart advice. He said, ‘If you want to survive in this crazy business of ours, then you have to operate under the assumption that every one of your transactions will eventually be scrutinized by a three-lettered government agency. And when that day comes, you’d better be damn sure that you have an explanation as to why the transaction doesn’t violate any securities laws or, for that matter, any laws.’

“Now, that being said, Roland, I’ll tell you that ninety-nine percent of what I do is on the up and up. The only problem is that the other one percent kills you every time. Perhaps it would be wise to put as much distance between myself and that one percent as humanly possible. I assume you’d be the trustee of each of these corporations, correct?”

“Yes, my friend. Pursuant to Swiss law, I will be empowered to sign documents on the corporation’s behalf and to enter into any contracts that I believe are in the best interest of the corporation or its beneficiaries. Of course, the only transactions that I will deem appropriate will be the ones you recommend. For example, if you were to tell me that you thought I should invest my money in a certain new issue or in a parcel of real estate—or anything, for that matter—then I would be obliged to follow your advice.

“And this is where my services will become most valuable to you. You see, with each investment we make, I will put together a file filled with research documents and correspondence—coming from various securities analysts or real estate experts or whoever else need be—so I have an independent basis for making my investment. Sometimes I might retain the services of an outside auditor, whose job it would be to furnish me with a report stating that the investment is a sound one. Of course, this auditor will always come to the appropriate conclusion, but not until he has issued a fancy report with bar charts and colored graphs. In the end, it is these things that truly support a notion of plausible deniability. If someone should ever raise a question as to why I made a particular investment, I would simply point to a two-inch-thick file and shrug my shoulders.

“Again, my friend, we are only scratching the surface here. There are many strategies I will share with you that will allow you to go about your business behind a cloak of invisibility. In addition, if there should ever come a time when you wish to repatriate any of this money—to bring it back into the United States, without so much as a trace—this is another area where I can be most helpful.”

Interesting, I thought. This was what I was having the most trouble getting my arms around. I moved forward to the edge of the couch, closing the distance between us to less than three feet. Then I lowered my voice and said, “That’s something I’m very much interested in, Roland. I tell you the truth—I was less than impressed with the scenarios Jean Jacques laid out for me; he outlined two different options, and, to my way of thinking, they were amateurish at best and suicidal at worst.”

“Well,” replied Roland, with a shrug of his shoulders, “that doesn’t really surprise me. Jean Jacques is a banker; his expertise lies in the marshaling of assets, not in the juggling of them. He is an excellent banker, I might add, and he will manage your account well, with the utmost discretion. But he is not well versed in the creation of documents that allow money to flow back and forth between countries without raising eyebrows. That is the function of a trustee”—a Master Forger!—“such as myself. In fact, you will find that Union Bancaire will heavily discourage the movement of money out of the account. Of course, you will always be able to do with your money as you please; they will not actually try to stop you. But do not be surprised if Jean Jacques tries to dissuade you from moving money out of the account, perhaps using the excuse that moving money raises red flags. But this is not something to be held against Jean Jacques. All Swiss bankers operate in that fashion, and it is a self-serving one, I might add. The simple fact, my friend, is that with three trillion dollars a day flowing in and out of the Swiss banking system, there is no amount of activity in your account that could possibly raise a red flag. As smart a man as you can easily see the bank’s motivation for wanting to keep their account balances as elevated as possible.

“Out of curiosity, though, what ways did Jean Jacques suggest to you? I am interested to hear the bank’s latest rhetoric in this area.” With that, Roland leaned back and interlaced his fingers over his belly.

Mirroring his body language, I slid back from the edge of the couch and said, “Well, the first way he recommended was through a debit card. That seemed fucking outlandish to me, if you’ll pardon my fucking French. I mean, running around town with a debit card tied to a foreign account leaves a paper trail a mile wide!” I shook my head and rolled my eyes, to drive my point home.

“And his second recommendation was equally ridiculous: I would use my overseas money to take out a mortgage on my own home, in the United States. Anyway, I trust that none of this will be repeated to Saurel, but I have to admit I was extremely disappointed with this part of his presentation. So tell me, Roland—what am I missing here?”

Roland smiled confidently. “There are many ways to do this, all of which leave no paper trail whatsoever. Or, to be more accurate, they leave a very wide paper trail, but it’s just the sort of trail you would like to see, the sort that supports a position of complete innocence and will stand up to the most intense scrutiny, on both sides of the Atlantic. Are you familiar with the practice of transfer pricing?”

Transfer pricing? Yes, I knew what it was, but how would—all at once a thousand nefarious strategies went flashing through my brain. The possibilities were…limitless! I smiled broadly at my Master Forger and said, “Actually, I do, Master For—I mean, Roland, and it’s a brilliant idea.”

He seemed shocked that I knew about the little-known art of transfer pricing, which was a financial shell game where you would engage a transaction, either underpaying or overpaying for a particular product, depending on which way you wanted your money to flow. The rub lied in the fact that you were actually on both sides of the transaction: You were both the buyer and the seller. Transfer pricing was used mostly as a tax dodge, a strategy employed by billion-dollar multinational corporations—whereby they would alter their internal pricing strategies when selling from one wholly owned subsidiary to another—which resulted in the transfer of profits from countries with heavy corporate income-tax burdens to countries with none. I had read something about it in an obscure economics magazine—an article about Honda Motors, which was overcharging its U.S. factories for automotive parts, thereby minimizing its U.S. profits. For obvious reasons, the IRS was in an uproar.

Roland said, “I am surprised you know about transfer pricing. It is not a widely known practice, especially in the United States.”

I shrugged. “I can see a thousand ways to use it, to move money back and forth without raising any eyebrows. All we have to do is form a bearer corporation and interposition it in some sort of transaction with one of my U.S. companies. Right off the top of my head I’m thinking about a company called Dollar Time. They’re sitting on a couple of million dollars of worthless clothing inventory that I couldn’t sell even for one dollar, just like the name says.

“But what we could do is form a bearer corporation and give it a name that sounds clothing-related, like Wholesale Clothing Inc. or something along those lines. Then I can have Dollar Time enter into a transaction with my overseas company, which would buy the worthless inventory, moving my money from Switzerland back into the United States. And the only paper trail would be a purchase order and an invoice.”

Roland nodded and said, “Yes, my friend. And I have the ability to print up all sorts of invoices and bills of sale and anything else that might be needed. I can even print brokerage confirmations and date them back as of a year ago. In other words, we can go back to last year’s newspaper and pick a stock that has gone up tremendously, then create records that indicate a certain trade was made. But I am getting ahead of myself here. It would take me many months to teach you everything.

“On a separate note, I can also make arrangements to have large amounts of cash available to you in many foreign countries, simply by forming bearer corporations and then creating documentation for purchases and sales for nonexistent commodities. At the end of the day, the profit will end up in the country of your choosing, where you may retrieve the cash. And all that will be left is an airtight paper trail that points to the legitimacy of the transaction. In fact, I have already formed two companies on your behalf. Come, my boy, and I will show you.” With that, my Master Forger raised his enormous bulk from his black leather club chair, led me to the wall of corporate books, and removed two of them. “Here,” he said. “The first is called United Overseas Investments, and the second is called Far East Ventures. They are both chartered in the British Virgin Islands, where there will be no taxes to pay and no regulation to speak of. All I need is a copy of Patricia’s passport and then I will handle the rest.”

“No problem,” I said, smiling, and I reached into my inside suit-jacket pocket and handed the copy of Patricia’s passport to my wonderful Master Forger. I would learn everything I could from this man. I would learn all the ins and outs of the Swiss banking world. I would learn how to hide all my transactions within an impenetrable web of foreign bearer corporations. And if the going ever got rough, the very paper trail I would create would be my salvation.

Yes—it all made sense now. As different as Jean Jacques Saurel and Roland Franks were, they were both men of power, and they were both men who could be trusted. And this was the land of Switzerland, the glorious land of secrets, where neither of them would have any reason to betray me.

Alas, I would be wrong about one of them.

^{CHAPTER 18} FU MANCHU AND THE MULE

It was a gorgeous Saturday afternoon in Westhampton Beach, on Labor Day weekend, and we were lying in bed, making love, just like any other husband and wife—sort of. The Duchess was lying flat on her back with her arms extended over her head and her head resting upon a white silk pillow, the perfect curve of her face framed by her luxurious mane of golden blond hair. She looked like an angel sent down from heaven just for me. I was lying on top of her with my arms extended like hers, and I was holding down her hands with my hands, our fingers interlaced. A thin film of perspiration was all that separated us.

I was trying to use the full weight of my skinny body to keep her from moving. We were pretty much the same size, so we fit together like bookends. As I breathed in her glorious scent, I could feel her nipples pushing against mine, and I could feel the warmth of her luscious thighs against my thighs, and I could feel the silky smoothness of her ankles rubbing against mine.

But in spite of being soft and slender, and ten degrees hotter than a raging campfire, she was stronger than an ox! Hard as I tried, I couldn’t seem to keep her in one spot. “Stop moving!” I sputtered, with a mixture of passion and anger. “I’m almost done, Nae! Just keep your legs together!”

Now the Duchess’s voice took on the tone of a child about to throw a temper tantrum: “I’m—not—comfortable! Now—let—me—up!”

I tried kissing her on the lips, but she turned her head to the side and all I caught was a high cheekbone. I craned my head and tried catching her from a side angle, but she quickly turned her head to the other side. Now I had the other cheekbone. It was so chiseled I almost cut my lower lip.

I knew I should release her—that would be the right thing to do—but I wasn’t up for a location change right now, especially when I was so close to the Promised Land. So I tried changing tactics. In the tone of the beggar, I said, “Come on, Nae! Please don’t do this to me!” I offered her a pout. “I’ve been a perfect husband for two weeks now, so stop complaining and let me kiss you!”

As the words escaped my lips, I took great pride in the fact that they were actually true. I had been a near-perfect husband since the day I’d arrived home from Switzerland. I hadn’t slept with one prostitute—not even one!—not to mention the fact that I hadn’t even been staying out late. My drug intake was down—way down!—cut by more than half, and I’d even skipped a few days. In fact, I couldn’t recall the last time I’d entered the drool phase.

I was in the middle of one of those brief interludes where my outrageous drug addiction seemed somewhat under control. I’d had these periods before, where my uncontrollable urge to fly higher than the Concorde was greatly diminished. And during these periods even my back pain seemed less severe, and I would sleep better. But, alas, it was always temporary. Something or someone would set me off on a rampage—and then it would be worse than before.

With a bit of anger slipping out, I said, “Come on, God damn it! Hold your head still! I’m almost ready to come, and I want to kiss you while I’m coming!”

Apparently the Duchess didn’t appreciate my selfish attitude. Before I realized what was happening, she had placed her hands on my shoulders and with one swift movement of her slender arms she thrust upward—and my penis quickly disinserted itself and I was flying off the bed, heading for the bleached-wood floor.

On my way down, I caught a pleasant glimpse of the dark blue Atlantic Ocean, which I could see through a solid wall of plate glass that ran the entire length of the back of the house. The ocean was about a hundred yards away, but it looked much closer. Just before I hit the dirt I heard the Duchess say, “Oh, honey! Watch out! I didn’t mean—”

BOOM!

I took a deep breath and blinked, praying for no broken bones. “Ughhhhhhhhhhh…why’d you do that?” I groaned. I was now lying flat on my back, stark naked, with my erect penis glistening in the early-afternoon sunlight. I tilted my head up and took a moment to regard my erection…. It was still intact. That lifted my spirits a bit. Had I thrown my back out?…No, I was pretty sure I hadn’t. But I was too dazed to move a muscle.

The Duchess poked her blond head over the side of the bed and stared at me quizzically. Then she pursed those luscious lips of hers, and in a tone that a mother would normally use on a child who’d just taken an unexpected tumble in the playground, she said, “Oh, my poor little baby! Come back into bed with me, and I’ll make you feel all better!”

Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I ignored her use of the word little and rolled over onto all fours and stood up. I was about to climb back on top of her when I found myself mesmerized by the incredible sight before me: not just the luscious Duchess but also the $3 million in cash she was lying upon.

Yes—it was $3 million on the nose. The big three-O!

We had just finished counting it. It was wrapped in stacks of $10,000, and each stack was about an inch thick. There were three hundred stacks, and they were spread out over the entire length of the king-size mattress—one atop the other, a foot and a half in the air. At each corner of the bed, an enormous elephant tusk rose up three feet, setting the motif for the room, which was an African safari come to Long Island!

Just then Nadine scooted over to the side of the bed, sending $70 or $80,000 onto the floor. It joined another quarter million or so that had gone flying off the bed along with me. Still, it didn’t make a dent in the picture. There was so much green on the bed it looked like the floor of the Amazon rain forest after a monsoon.

The Duchess fixed me with a warm smile. “I’m sorry, sweetie! I didn’t mean to throw you off the bed…I swear!” She shrugged innocently. “I just had this terrible cramp in my shoulder, and I guess you don’t weigh that much. Let’s go into the closet and make love there. Okay, love-bug?” She flashed me another lubricious smile, and with one athletic move she popped her naked body right out of bed and stood beside me. Then she crooked her mouth to the side and started chewing on the inside of her own cheek. It was something she did whenever she was having trouble making sense of something.

After a few seconds, she stopped chewing and said, “Are you sure this is legal, ’cause I don’t know. There’s something about it that seems…wrong.”

At this particular moment I had little desire to lie to my wife about my money-laundering activities. In fact, my only current desire was to bend her over the side of the bed and fuck her brains out! But she was my wife, which meant she had earned the right to be lied to. With the utmost conviction, I said, “I told you, Nae—I took all the cash out of the bank. You’ve seen me do it. Now, I’m not denying that Elliot hasn’t given me a few dollars here and there”—a few dollars? Try $5 million!—“but that has nothing to do with this money. All this money is strictly legit, and if the government were to come charging in here right now, I would simply show them my withdrawal slips, and that would be that.” I put my arms around her waist and pressed my body against hers and kissed her.

She giggled and pulled away. “I know you took the cash out of the bank, but it just seems illegal. I don’t know…having this much cash…well, I don’t know. It just seems weird.” She started chewing on the inside of her mouth again. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

I was slowly losing my erection, which deeply saddened me. It was time for a location change. “Just trust me, sweetie. I got it under control. Let’s go in the closet and make love. Todd and Carolyn are gonna be here in less than an hour, and I wanna make love without rushing. Please?”

She narrowed her eyes at me, then all at once she took off into a run and said over her shoulder, “I’ll race you to the closet!”

And off we went—without so much as a care in the world.

There was no denying that some very wacky Jews had fled from Lefrak City in the early 1970s.

But none of them was wackier than Todd Garret.

Todd was three years older than me, and I can still remember the first time I laid eyes on him. I had just turned ten years old, and Todd was standing in the one-car garage of the garden apartment he had moved into with his two wacky parents, Lester and Thelma. His older brother, Freddy, had recently died of a heroin overdose, the rusty needle still in his arm when they’d found him sitting on the toilet bowl, two days postmortem.

So, relatively speaking, Todd was the normal one.

Anyway, he was kicking and punching a white canvas heavy bag—wearing black kung fu pants and black kung fu slippers. Back then, in the early seventies, there weren’t karate centers in every local shopping center, so Todd Garret quickly developed a reputation as being somewhat of an oddity. But at least he was consistent: You could find him in his tiny garage, twelve hours a day, seven days a week—kicking and punching and kneeing the bag.

No one took Todd seriously until he turned seventeen. It was then that Todd found himself standing in the wrong bar somewhere in Jackson Heights, Queens. Jackson Heights was only a few miles away from Bayside, but it might just as well have been on another planet. The official language was broken English; the most common profession was unemployment; and even the grandmas carried switchblades. Anyway, inside the bar, words were exchanged between Todd and four Colombian drug dealers—at which point they attacked him. When it was all over, two of them had broken bones, all four had broken faces, and one had been stabbed with his own knife, which Todd had taken from him. After that, everyone took Todd seriously.

From there, Todd made the logical leap into big-time drug dealing, where through a combination of fear and intimidation, along with a healthy dose of street smarts, he quickly rose to the top. He was in his early twenties—making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. He spent his summers in the south of France and the Italian Riviera—and his winters on the glorious beaches of Rio de Janeiro.

All was going well for Todd until one day five years ago. He was lying on Ipanema Beach and got bitten by an unidentified tropical insect—and just like that, four months later, he found himself on the waiting list for a heart transplant. In less than a year he was down to ninety-five pounds, and his five-foot ten-inch frame looked like a skeleton’s.

After Todd spent two long years on the waiting list, a six-foot six-inch lumberjack, who apparently had two left feet and an unusually short lifeline, fell from a California redwood tree and plunged to his death. And, as they say, one man’s curse was another man’s blessing: His tissue type was a perfect match for Todd.

Three months after his heart transplant Todd was back in the gym; three months after that he was back at full strength; three months after that, Todd became the biggest Quaalude dealer in America; and three months after that, he found out that I, Jordan Belfort, the owner of the fabled investment-banking firm of Stratton Oakmont, was addicted to Quaaludes, so he reached out to me.

That was more than two years ago, and since then Todd had sold me five thousand Quaaludes and given me five thousand more—free—in exchange for all the money I was making him in Stratton new issues. But as the profits on the new issues soared into the millions, he quickly realized that he couldn’t possibly reciprocate with Quaaludes. So he began asking me if there was anything he could do for me, anything at all.

I had resisted the impulse to have him beat up every kid who had looked at me wrong since the second grade, but after the three thousandth time of him saying, “If there’s anything I could ever do for you, even if it means killing someone, you just let me know,” I finally decided to take him up on the offer. And the fact that his new wife, Carolyn, happened to be a Swiss citizen made things seem that much more natural.

At this particular moment Todd and Carolyn were standing in my master bedroom doing what they always did: arguing! At my urging, the Duchess had gone into town to do some shopping. After all, I didn’t want her to see the very insanity that was now transpiring before me.

The very insanity: Carolyn Garret was wearing nothing but white silk panties and white Tretorn tennis sneakers. She was standing less than five feet from me, with her hands clasped behind her head and her elbows cocked out to the side, as if a policeman had just screamed, “Put your hands behind your head and freeze, or I’ll shoot!” Meanwhile, her enormous Swiss breasts hung like two overfilled water balloons slapped onto her thin-boned, five-foot two-inch frame. A lusty mane of bleached-blond hair went all the way down to the crack of her ass. She had a set of terrific blue eyes, a broad forehead, and a face that was pretty enough. She was a bombshell, all right—a Swiss bombshell.

“Tahad, you are zdupid fool!” said the Swiss Bombshell, whose thick accent dripped with Swiss cheese. “You are hutting me weeth zees tape, you ahhs-zole!” Hurting me with this tape, you asshole.

“Shut up, you French wench,” replied her loving husband, “and stay fucking still, before I slap you!” Todd was circling his wife, holding a roll of masking tape in his hand. With each complete revolution, the $300,000 of cash already taped to her stomach and thighs grew that much tighter.

“Who do you call wench, you imbecile! I have the right to smash you one for making such a comment at me. Right, Jordan?”

I nodded. “Definitely, Carolyn—you go right ahead and smash his face in. The problem is, your husband’s such a sick bastard that he’ll probably enjoy it! If you really want to piss him off, why don’t you go around town telling everyone how kind and nice he is, and how he likes to lie in bed with you on Sunday mornings and read the Times?”

Todd flashed me an evil smile, and I couldn’t help but wonder how a Jew from Lefrak could end up looking so much like Fu Manchu. The simple fact was that his eyes had become slightly slanted and his skin had turned slightly yellow and he had a beard and mustache that made him a dead ringer for Fu Manchu. Todd always wore black, and today was no exception. He had on a black Versace T-shirt, with an enormous black leather V on the front, and black Lycra bicycle shorts. Both the shirt and the shorts hugged his heavily muscled body like a second skin. I could see the outline of a gun, a .38 snub-nose that he always carried, bulging out from beneath his bicycle shorts over the small of his back. On his forearms was a thick coating of coarse black hair that looked like it belonged on a werewolf.

“I don’t know why you encourage her,” muttered Todd. “Just ignore her. It’s much easier.”

The Bombshell gritted her white teeth. “Oh, go ignore yourself, you douche-a-bag-a!”

“It’s douche bag,” snapped Todd, “not douche-a-bag-a, you Swiss nitwit! Now shut the fuck up and don’t move. I’m almost done.”

Todd reached over to the bed and picked up a handheld metal detector—the kind used when you pass through airport security. He began sweeping it up and down the full length of the Bombshell’s body. When he reached her enormous breasts, he paused…and both of us took a moment to regard them. Well, I was never really much of a breast man, but she did happen to have an unusually fine pair of jugs.

“You see, I tell you,” said the Bombshell. “It make no sound! This is paper money, not silver. Why you think metal detector make difference, huh? You just feel like wasting money buying zdupid device, after I tell you no, dog-man!”

Todd shook his head in disgust. “The next dog-man is your last dog-man, and if you think I’m kidding then just go ahead and say it. But to answer your question, every hundred-dollar bill has a thin strip of metal in it, so I just wanted to make sure that when they were all wrapped together it wouldn’t set off the detector. Here, look.” He slid a single hundred-dollar bill from one of the stacks and held it up to the light. Sure enough, there it was: a thin metal strip, perhaps a millimeter wide, that ran from the top of the bill to the bottom.

Pleased with himself, Todd said, “Okay, genius? Don’t ever doubt me again.”

“Okay, I give you this one, Tahad, but nothing more. I will tell you that you need to treat me better, because I am nice girl and I could find other man. You big show-off in front of your friend, but me wear the pants in this family and that…”

And the Swiss Bombshell went on and on about how Tahad mistreated her, but I stopped listening. It was becoming painfully obvious that she alone couldn’t smuggle nearly enough cash to make a real dent in things. Unless she was willing to stick the cash in her luggage, which I considered too risky, it would take her ten roundtrips to get the full $3 million there. That would mean clearing Customs twenty times, ten on each side of the Atlantic. The fact that she was a Swiss citizen all but assured she would slip into Switzerland without incident, and the chances of her being stopped on the way out of the United States were virtually nil. In fact, unless someone had tipped off U.S. Customs, there was no chance whatsoever.

Still, to keep sticking your hand in the cookie jar over and over again seemed reckless—almost bad karma. Eventually something had to go wrong. And $3 million was just what I was starting with; if all went well, I was planning to smuggle five times that.

I said to Tahad and the Swiss Bombshell, “I hate to interrupt you guys from killing each other, but, if you’ll excuse me, Carolyn, I need to take a walk on the beach with your husband. I don’t think you can bring enough cash there alone, so we need to rethink things, and I’d prefer not to talk in the house.” I reached over to the bed, picked up a pair of sewing scissors, and handed them to Todd. “Here—why don’t you cut her loose and then we’ll go down to the beach.”

“Fuck her!” he said, handing his wife the scissors. “Let her uncut herself. It’ll give her something to do besides complain. That’s all she ever does, anyway—shop and complain, and maybe spread her legs once in a while.”

“Oh, you funny man, Tahad. Like you such great lover! Hah! That is big joke. Go, Jordan—you take big shot to beach so I have moment of peace. I unwrap myself.”

With skepticism, I said, “Are you sure, Carolyn?”

Todd said, “Yeah, she’s sure.” Then he looked Carolyn right in the eye and said, “When we bring this money back to the city, I’m gonna recount every dollar of it, and if there’s so much as one bill missing, I’ll slit your throat and watch you bleed to death!”

The Swiss Bombshell started screaming: “Ohhh, this is last time you make threat at me! I will flush all your medicine and replace with poison…you…you fuck! I will smash…” and she kept cursing at Todd in a combination of English and French, and perhaps a little bit of German, although it was hard to tell.

Todd and I exited the master bedroom through a sliding glass door that looked out over the Atlantic. In spite of the door being thick enough to withstand a Category 5 hurricane, I could still hear Carolyn screaming when we reached the back deck.

At the far end of the deck, a long wooden walkway jutted out over the dunes and led down to the sand. As we made our way over to the edge of the water I felt calm, almost serene—despite the voice inside my head that screamed, “You’re in the midst of making one of the gravest errors of your young life!” But I ignored the voice and instead focused on the warmth of the sun.

We were heading west with the dark blue Atlantic Ocean off to our left. There was a commercial fishing trawler about two hundred yards offshore, and I could see white seagulls dive-bombing in the trawler’s wake, trying to steal scraps from the day’s catch. In spite of the obvious benign nature of the vessel, it still occurred to me that there might be a government agent hiding atop the flybridge—pointing a parabolic mike at us, trying to listen to our conversation.

I took a deep breath, fought down the paranoia, and said, “It’s not gonna work with just Carolyn. It’ll take too many trips, and if she keeps going back and forth Customs will eventually flag her passport. And I can’t afford to spread the trips out over the next six months either. I have other business in the States that’s contingent on me getting the funds overseas.”

Todd nodded but said nothing. He had enough street smarts not to ask what sort of business I had or why it was so pressing. But the fact remained that I had to get my money overseas as quickly as possible. As I’d suspected, Dollar Time was in much worse shape than Kaminsky had let on; it needed an immediate cash infusion of $3 million.

If I tried to raise money through a public offering, it would take at least three months and I would be forced to do an interim audit of the company’s books. Now that would be a nasty picture! Christ! At the rate the company was burning cash, I was certain that the auditor would issue a going-concern opinion—meaning, they would add a footnote to the company’s financials stating that there were serious doubts the company could stay in business for another year. If that happened, NASDAQ would delist the company, which would be the kiss of death. Once off NASDAQ, Dollar Time would become a true penny stock, and all would be lost.

So my only option was to raise money through a private offering. But that was easier said than done. As formidable as Stratton was at raising money for public offerings, it was weak at raising money for private offerings. (It was an entirely different business, and Stratton wasn’t geared up for it.) In addition, I was always working on ten or fifteen deals at the same time, and each of them required some amount of private money. So I was already spread thin. To sink $3 million into Dollar Time would put a serious damper on my other investment-banking deals.

But there was an answer: Regulation S. Through the legal exemption of Regulation S I could use my “Patricia Mellor accounts” to buy private stock in Dollar Time, then forty days later turn around and sell it back into the United States at a huge profit. It was a far cry from having to buy stock privately—in the United States—and then wait two full years to sell it under Rule 144.

I had already run the Regulation S scenario by Roland Franks, and he assured me that he could create all the necessary paperwork to make the transaction bulletproof. All I had to do was get my money to Switzerland, and then everything would take care of itself.

I said to Todd, “Maybe I should fly it over in the Gulfstream. Last time I went through Swiss Customs they didn’t even stamp my passport. I don’t see why this time would be any different.”

Todd shook his head. “No way, I won’t let you put yourself at risk. You’ve been too good to me and my family. What I’ll do is have my mother and father carry money over too. They’re both in their early seventies, so there’s no way Customs will suspect them. They’ll slip right through on both sides without a problem. I’ll also get Rich† and Dina† to do it. That’ll be five people, three hundred thousand each. In two trips it’ll be done. Then we’ll wait a few weeks and do it again.” He paused for a few seconds, then added, “You know, I would do it myself but I think I’m on a watch list from all the drug stuff. But I know my parents are totally clean, and so are Rich and Dina.”

We walked in silence while I thought things through. In truth, Todd’s parents were perfect mules; as old as they were, they would never get stopped. But Rich and Dina were a different story. They both looked like hippies, especially Rich, who had hair down to his ass and the strung-out look of a heroin junkie. Dina also had a junkie’s look, but, being a woman, perhaps Customs would mistake her for a washed-out hag in desperate need of a makeover. “Okay,” I said confidently. “There’s no doubt your parents are a safe bet, and probably Dina as well. But Rich looks too much like a drug dealer, so let’s leave him out of this.”

Todd stopped walking, and he turned to me and said, “All I ask, buddy, is if God forbid something happens to any one of them that you take care of all the legal bills. I know you will, but I just wanted to say it up front so I wouldn’t have to bring it up later. But, trust me, nothing is gonna happen. I promise you.”

I put my arm on Todd’s shoulder and said, “All that goes without saying. If something happens, not only will I pay the legal bills but, as long as everyone keeps their mouth shut, they’ll wind up with a seven-figure cash bonus when it’s all over. Anyway, I trust you completely, Todd. I’m gonna give you the three million dollars to take back into the city, and I have no doubt it will end up in Switzerland within the week. There’re only a handful of people in the world I would put that much trust in.”

Todd nodded solemnly.

Then I added, “On a separate note, Danny has another million to give you, but he won’t have it until the middle of next week. I’ll be up in New England with Nadine on the yacht, so call Danny and make plans to hook up with him, all right?”

Todd grimaced. “I’ll do whatever you say, but I hate dealing with Danny. He’s a fucking loose cannon; he does too many Quaaludes during the day. If he shows up with a million dollars in cash and he’s all Luded out, I swear to God I’m gonna smack him in the face. This is serious shit, and I don’t wanna be dealing with a slurring idiot.”

I smiled. “Point well taken; I’ll talk to him. Anyway, I gotta get back to the house. Nadine’s aunt is in from England, and she’s coming out here with Nadine’s mother for dinner. I gotta get ready.”

Todd nodded. “No problem. Just don’t forget to tell Danny not to be fucked up when he meets me on Wednesday, okay?”

I smiled and nodded. “I won’t forget, Todd. I promise.”

Feeling satisfied, I turned toward the ocean and looked out to the edge of the horizon. The sky was a deep cobalt blue with just a sliver of magenta where the sky melted into the water. I took a deep breath…

And just like that I forgot.

^{CHAPTER 19} A LEAST LIKELY MULE

Dinner out! Westhampton! Or Jew-Hampton, as it was referred to by all those WASP bastards living down the road in Southampton. It was no secret that the WASPs sneered straight down their long, thin noses at the Westhamptonites, as if we were the sorts of Jews who’d just had our passports stamped at Ellis Island and were still dressed in long black coats and top hats.

Anyway, in spite of all that, I still considered Westhampton a fine place to keep a beach house. It was for the young and the wild, and, most importantly, it was full of Strattonites—the male Strattonites blowing obscene amounts of money on the female Strattonites, and the female Strattonites blowing the male Strattonites in return, in the Stratton version of a quid pro quo.

On this particular evening I was sitting at a table for four at Starr Boggs restaurant, athwart the dunes of Westhampton Beach, with two Quaaludes bathing the pleasure center of my brain. For a guy like me it was a rather minor dose, and I was in complete control. I had a terrific view of the Atlantic Ocean, which was a mere stone’s throw away. In fact, it was so close that I could hear the waves breaking upon the shore. At 8:30 p.m. there was still enough light in the sky to turn the horizon into a swirling palette of purple and pink and midnight blue. An impossibly large full moon hung just over the Atlantic.

It was the sort of glorious view that served as an indisputable testament to the wonder of Mother Nature, which stood in sharp contrast to the restaurant itself, which was a total fucking dump! White metallic picnic tables were strewn about a gray wooden deck that was in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint and a serious desplintering. In fact, if you walked barefoot on the deck you were sure to end up in the emergency room at Southampton Hospital, which was the only institution in Southampton that accepted Jews, albeit reluctantly. Adding insult to injury, a hundred or so red, orange, and purple lanterns hung from thin gray wires that crisscrossed the roofless restaurant. It looked like someone had forgotten to take down last season’s Christmas lights—someone with a severe alcohol problem. And then there were tiki torches, which were strategically positioned here and there. They gave off a feeble orange glow, making the place seem that much sadder.

But none of this—with the exception of the tiki torches—was the fault of Starr, the restaurant’s tall, potbellied owner. He was a first-class chef, Starr, and his prices were more than reasonable. I had taken Mad Max here once, to provide him with a visual explanation of how my average Starr Boggs dinner bill ran $10,000. It was a concept he was having trouble grasping, since he wasn’t aware of the special reserve of red wine that Starr stocked for me, the average price being $3,000 per bottle.

Tonight the Duchess and I, along with Nadine’s mother, Suzanne, and the lovely Aunt Patricia, had already killed two bottles of Chateau Margaux, 1985, and were deep into our third—despite the fact that we hadn’t ordered appetizers yet. But given the fact that Suzanne and Aunt Patricia were both half Irish, their proclivity for all things alcoholic was to be expected.

So far, the dinner conversation had been entirely innocuous, as I carefully steered things away from the subject of international money laundering. And while I had told Nadine what was going on with her aunt Patricia, I’d couched things in a way that made it all seem perfectly legit—glossing over the finer points, like the thousand and one laws we were breaking, and focusing on how Aunt Patricia would be getting her own credit card, allowing her to live out the twilight of her life in the lap of luxury. Anyway, after a few minutes of inside-cheek-chewing and some halfhearted threats, Nadine had finally bought into it.

At this particular moment Suzanne was explaining how the AIDS virus was a U.S. government conspiracy, not much different than Roswell or the Kennedy assassination. I was trying to pay close attention, but I was distracted by the ridiculous straw hats she and Aunt Patricia had decided to wear. They were larger than Mexican sombreros, and they had pink flowers around the brim. It was plainly obvious that the two of them weren’t residents of Jew-Hampton. In fact, they looked like they were from a different planet.

And as my mother-in-law continued bashing the government, the delectable Duchess began nudging me under the table with the tip of her high heel, the unspoken message being: “Here she goes again!” I casually turned to her and gave her the hint of a wink. I couldn’t get over how quickly she’d bounced back after Chandler’s birth. Just six weeks ago she looked like she’d swallowed a basketball! Now she was back at her fighting weight—a hundred twelve pounds of solid steel—ready to smack me at the slightest provocation.

I grabbed Nadine’s hand and placed it on the table, as if to show I was speaking for both of us, and said, “When it comes to your theories about the press and how everything’s a pack of lies, I couldn’t agree with you more, Suzanne. The problem is that most people aren’t as insightful as you.” I shook my head gravely.

Patricia picked up her wineglass, took a prodigious gulp, then said, “How convenient it is to feel that way about the press, especially since you’re the one those bloody bastards keep bashing! Wouldn’t you say, my love?”

I smiled at Patricia and said, “Well, that calls for a toast!” I raised my wineglass and waited for everyone to follow suit. After a few seconds I said, “To the lovely Aunt Patricia, who was blessed with the truly remarkable talent of being able to call a horse’s ass a horse’s ass!” With that we all clinked glasses and drank five hundred dollars’ worth of wine in less than a second.

Nadine reached over to me and rubbed my cheek and said, “Oh, honey, we all know that everything they say about you is lies. So don’t you worry, sweetness!”

“Yes,” added Suzanne, “of course it’s all lies. They make it seem as if you alone are doing something wrong. It’s almost laughable when you think about. This all goes back to the Rothschilds, in the 1700s, and to J. P. Morgan and his brood, back in the 1900s. The stock market is just another puppet of the government. You can see…”

Suzanne was off again. I mean, there was no denying she was a little bit kooky—but who wasn’t? And she was smart as a whip. She was a voracious reader, and she’d single-handedly raised Nadine and her younger brother, AJ, doing one hell of a job (at least with Nadine). And the fact that her ex-husband hadn’t given her one ounce of support, financial or otherwise, made her accomplishment that much grander. She was a beautiful woman, Suzanne, with shoulder-length strawberry-blond hair and brilliant blue eyes. All in all, a good egg.

Just then Starr walked over to the table. He wore a white chef’s jacket and a towering white chef’s hat. He looked like a six-foot-four-inch Pillsbury Doughboy.

“Good evening,” said Starr in warm tones. “Happy Labor Day to all of you!”

My wife, the aspiring people-pleaser, immediately popped up out of her chair like an eager cheerleader and gave Starr a pleasant peck on the cheek. Then she began the process of introducing her family. After a few wonderful minutes of meaningless small talk, Starr began explaining the evening’s specials, starting with his world-famous pan-fried soft-shell crabs. But in less than a millisecond, I stopped listening and started thinking about Todd and Carolyn and my $3 million. How on earth were they going to get it all there without getting caught? And what about the rest of my cash? Perhaps I should have used Saurel’s courier service? But that had seemed risky, hadn’t it? I mean—to meet a complete stranger at a sordid rendezvous point and hand over that much money?

I looked over at Nadine’s mother, who, by chance, was looking at me too. She offered me the warmest of smiles, an altogether loving smile, which I returned without hesitation. I had been very good to Suzanne. In fact, since the day I’d fallen in love with Nadine, Suzanne had never wanted for anything. Nadine and I bought her a car, rented her a beautiful home on the water, and gave her $8,000 a month in spending money. In my book, Suzanne was aces. She had never been anything but supportive of our marriage, and…

…then all at once the most devilish thought occurred to me. Hmmm…it was really too bad that Suzanne and Patricia couldn’t carry some money over to Switzerland. I mean, really—who would ever suspect them? Look at them, in those stupid hats! What would be the chances that a Customs agent would ever stop them? Zero! It had to be! Two old ladies smuggling money? It would be the perfect crime. But I instantly regretted thinking any such thought. Christ! If Suzanne got in trouble—well, Nadine would crucify me! She might even leave me and take Chandler. That was an impossibility! I couldn’t live without them! Not in—

Nadine screamed, “Earth to Jordan! Hello, Jordan!”

I turned to her and gave her a vacant smile.

“You want the swordfish, right, baby?”

I nodded eagerly and kept smiling.

Then she added with great confidence, “And he also wants a Caesar salad with no croutons.” She leaned over and gave me a wet kiss on the cheek, then sat back down in her seat.

Starr thanked us, complimented Nadine, and then went about his business. Aunt Patricia raised her wineglass and said, “I’d like to make another toast, please.”

We all raised our glasses.

In a serious tone, she said, “This toast is to you, Jordan. Without you, none of us would be here tonight. And thanks to you, I’m moving into a larger flat, closer to my grandchildren”—I looked out the corner of my eye at the Duchess to gauge her response. She was chewing on the inside of her mouth! Oh, shit!—“and it’s big enough so they can each have their own bedroom. You’re a truly generous man, my love, and that’s something to be very proud of. To you, my love!”

We all clinked glasses, then Nadine leaned over to me and gave me a warm, wonderful kiss on the lips, which sent the better part of five pints of blood rushing to my loins.

Wow! How wonderful my marriage was! And it was growing stronger every day! Nadine, myself, Chandler—we were a real family. Who could ask for anything more?

Two hours later I was knocking on my own front door, like Fred Flintstone after he’d been locked out by Dino, his pet dinosaur. “Come on, Nadine! Unlock the door and let me in! I’m sorry!”

From the other side of the door, the voice of my wife, dripping with disdain: “You’re sorry? Why—you—little fuck! If I open this door I’m gonna smash your face in!”

I took a deep breath…and slowly exhaled. God, I hated when she called me little! Why did she have to call me that? I wasn’t that little, for Chrissake! “Nae, I was only kidding around! Please! I’m not gonna let your mother carry money over to Switzerland! Now open the door and let me in!”

Nothing. No response, just footsteps. God damn her! What was she so mad about? It wasn’t me who’d suggested that her mother bring a couple of million dollars over to Switzerland! She’d offered! Perhaps I had led her into it, but, still, she had made the official offer!

More forcefully this time: “Nadine! Open up the fucking door and let me in! You’re overreacting!”

I heard more footsteps from inside the house, then the mail slot at waist level opened. Nadine’s voice came through the slot. “If you want to talk to me, then you can talk to me through here.”

What choice did I have? I bent down and—

SPLASH!

“Owwww, shit!” I screamed, wiping my eyeballs with the bottom of my white Ralph Lauren T-shirt. “That water’s piping hot, Nadine! What the fuck is wrong with you? You could’ve burned me!”

The disdainful Duchess: “Could’ve burned you? I’m gonna do more than that before I’m through! How the fuck could you talk my mother into doing that? You don’t think I know you manipulated her? Of course she’s gonna offer after everything you’ve done for her! You just made it so fucking simple for her, you manipulative little bastard! You and your stupid fucking sales tactics or Jedi mind tricks or whatever the fuck you call them! You’re a despicable human being!”

In spite of everything she’d said, it was the word little that wounded me most. “You better watch who you call little, or I’ll smash you one and—”

“Just go ahead and try! If you lift a hand to me, I’ll cut your balls off while you’re sleeping and feed them to you!”

Christ! How could such a beautiful face spew out such terrible venom—and at her own husband! The Duchess had looked like an angel tonight, not to mention that she’d been showering me with kisses all night long! But then, after Patricia had finished making her toast, I caught a glimpse of her and Suzanne from a certain angle in those ridiculous straw hats, and they reminded me of the Pigeon Sisters from the movie The Odd Couple. I figured, what Customs agent in his right mind would stop the Pigeon Sisters? And the fact that both of them carried British passports made the whole idea that much more plausible. So I launched a trial balloon, to see if either of them would be receptive to smuggling money for me.

My wife’s voice, through the slot: “Come down here and look me in the eye and tell me that you won’t let her do it.”

“Come down there? Yeah, right!” I said mockingly. “You want me to look you in the eye? Why? So you can throw more boiling water in my face? What do you think, I’m fucking stupid or something?”

The toneless voice of the Duchess: “I’m not gonna throw more water at you. I swear on Chandler’s eyes.”

I stood my ground.

“You know, the problem is that my mother and Aunt Patricia think this whole thing is a giant fucking game. They both hate the government and they figure it’s all for a good cause. And now that my mother has this thing in her mind, she’s not gonna stop talking about it until you let her do it. I know her like a book. She thinks it’s exciting—to walk through Customs with all that money and not get caught.”

“I won’t let her do it, Nae. I should have never brought it up in the first place. I just had too much wine. I’ll talk to her tomorrow.”

“You didn’t have too much wine; that’s the sad part. Even when you’re straight you’re a little devil. I don’t know why I love you so much. It’s me who’s the crazy one, not you! I really oughta have my head examined—really! I mean, dinner was twenty thousand dollars tonight! Who spends twenty thousand dollars on dinner unless it’s for a wedding or something? Nobody I know! But why would you care about that? You’ve got three million in the closet! And that’s not fucking normal either.

“Contrary to what you might think, Jordan, I don’t need all this. I just want to live a nice, quiet life, away from Stratton and away from all this madness. I think we should move before something bad happens.” She paused. “But you’ll never do it. You’re addicted to all the power—and to all those idiots who call you the King and the Wolf! Christ, the Wolf! What a fucking joke that is!” I could hear the disgust oozing through the keyhole. “My husband, the Wolf of Wall Street! It’s almost too ridiculous for words. But you can’t see that. All you care about is yourself. You’re a selfish little bastard. You really are.”

“Stop calling me little, for Chrissake! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Aw, you’re so sensitive,” she said mockingly. “Well, get this, Mr. Sensitive: Tonight you’re sleeping in the guest bedroom! And tomorrow night too! Maybe if you’re lucky I might have sex with you next year! But that’s a long shot!” A moment later I heard the door unlock…then the sound of her high heels clicking their way up the stairs.

Well, I guess I deserved it. But, still, what were the chances of her mother getting caught? Close to zero, one would think! It was just those stupid straw hats that she and Patricia were wearing that had made the thought bubble up to my brain. And the fact that I supported Suzanne financially counted for something, didn’t it? After all, that was why she’d offered in the first place! Her mother was a sharp, decent lady, and deep down she knew that there was some unspoken IOU that I could cash in on if I really needed to. I mean, when all the bullshit was stripped away, nobody just gave out of the goodness of their own heart, did they? There was always some sort of ulterior motive, even if it was nothing more than the personal feeling of satisfaction you received from helping another human being, which in its own way was self-serving too!

On a brighter note, at least I’d had sex with the Duchess that afternoon. So a day or two without sex wouldn’t be that difficult to handle.

^{CHAPTER 20} A CHINK IN THE ARMOR

The doleful Duchess had been half right and half wrong.

Yes, she’d been right about her mother insisting on playing a small role in “this fabulous adventure of mine,” as she and Patricia had come to refer to my international money-laundering scheme. In fact, there had been no talking her out of it. But in both our defenses (Suzanne’s and mine), it was a rather sexy notion, wasn’t it? To stuff an obscene amount of money—$900,000, to be exact—into an oversize pocketbook and then throw it over your shoulder and walk straight through Customs without getting caught? Yes, yes, it was very sexy, indeed!

But, no, no, the Duchess had been wrong to worry herself sick over it. The simple fact was that Suzanne had breached the gauntlet on both sides of the Atlantic without a raised eyebrow—delivering the cash to Jean Jacques Saurel with a wink and a smile. Now she was safely back in England, where she would be spending the rest of September with Aunt Patricia, as the two of them basked in the glory of getting away with breaking a dozen or so laws.

So the Duchess had forgiven me and we were lovers once more—currently taking an end-of-summer vacation in the harbor town of Newport, Rhode Island. Joining us were my oldest friend, Alan Lipsky, and his soon to be ex-wife, Doreen.

At this particular moment it was just Alan and I, and we were walking along a wooden dock on our way to the yacht Nadine. We were shoulder to shoulder, but Alan’s shoulder was a good six inches above mine. He was big and broad, Alan, with a barrel of a chest and a big thick neck. His face was handsome, in a Mafia hit man sort of way, with big, thick features and big, bushy eyebrows. Even now, dressed in a pair of light-blue Bermuda shorts, a tan V-neck T-shirt, and tan boating moccasins, he looked menacing.

Up ahead, I could see the Nadine towering above all the other yachts, its unusual tan color making it stand out that much more. As I drank up the glorious view, I couldn’t help but wonder why on earth I had bought the fucking thing. My crooked accountant, Dennis Gaito, had begged me not to—reciting the age-old axiom: “The two happiest days for a boat owner are the day he buys his boat and the day he sells his boat!” Dennis was as sharp as a whip, so I hesitated—until the Duchess told me that buying a yacht was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard, which left me no choice but to immediately write a check.

So now I owned the yacht Nadine, which was 167 feet of floating heartache. The problem was that the boat was old, originally built for famed designer Coco Chanel back in the early 1960s. In consequence, the thing was noisy as hell and constantly breaking down. Like most yachts of that era, there was enough teakwood adorning the three massive decks to keep the crew of twelve on their hands and knees, with varnish brushes, from morning until night. Every moment I was on the boat it reeked of varnish, which made me nauseous.

Ironically, when the yacht was built it was only 120 feet long. But then the previous owner, Bernie Little, decided to extend it to make room for a helicopter. And Bernie—well, Bernie was the cunning sort of bastard who knew a sucker when he saw one. He quickly convinced me to buy the yacht after I’d chartered it a few times, using my love for Captain Marc to seal the deal (he gave me Captain Marc with the boat). Shortly thereafter, Captain Marc convinced me to build a jet-powered seaplane from scratch—his theory being that the two of us were avid scuba divers and we could fly the seaplane to uncharted waters and find fish that had never been hunted before. He’d said, “The fish will be so stupid we’ll be able to pet them before we spear them!” It was a rather sexy prospect, I’d thought, so I gave him the green light to build it. The budget was $500,000, which quickly turned into a million.

But when we tried craning the seaplane onto the upper deck, we realized that the deck wasn’t big enough. What with the Bell Jet helicopter, the six Kawasaki Jet Skis, the two Honda motorcycles, the fiberglass diving board and water slide—all of which were already on the top deck—there would no room for the helicopter to take off and land without colliding with the seaplane. I was in so deep with all this crap that I had no choice but to put the boat back in the shipyard and have it extended once more, for a cost of $700,000.

So the front had been pulled forward; the back had been pushed back; the yacht now looked like a 167-foot rubber band on the verge of snapping.

I said to Alan, “I’ll tell you, I really love this boat. I’m glad I bought it.”

Alan nodded in agreement. “She’s a beauty!”

Captain Marc was waiting for me on the dock, looking as square as one of those Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots that Alan and I used to play with as kids. He was dressed in a white collared T-shirt and white boating shorts, both of which bore the Nadine logo—two gold-colored eagle’s feathers bent around a royal-blue capital N.

Captain Marc said, “You got a bunch of phone calls, boss. One from Danny, who sounded higher than a kite, and then three more calls from a girl named Carolyn, with a heavy French accent. She said you need to call her right away, as soon as you get back to the boat.”

Immediately my heart began thumping inside my chest. Christ! Danny was supposed to meet Todd this morning and give him the million dollars! Shit! All at once a thousand thoughts went flashing through my brain. Had something gone wrong? Had they somehow gotten caught? Were they both in jail? No, that was impossible, unless they were being followed. But why would someone be following them? Or maybe Danny had showed up stoned and Todd had knocked him out and Carolyn was calling to apologize. No, that was ridiculous! Todd would call himself, wouldn’t he? Fuck! I had forgotten to tell Danny not to show up stoned!

I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself down. Maybe it was all just a coincidence. I smiled at Captain Marc and said, “Did Danny say anything?”

Captain Marc shrugged. “It was kinda hard to understand him, but he said to tell you that everything was cool.”

Alan said, “Is everything okay? You need me to do anything?”

“No, no,” I replied, breathing a sigh of relief. Alan, of course, having grown up in Bayside, knew Todd as well as I did. Still, I hadn’t told Alan what was going on. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him; there simply had been no reason to tell him. The only thing he was aware of was that I was going to need his brokerage firm, Monroe Parker, to buy a few million shares of Dollar Time from an unaffiliated overseas seller, which, perhaps, he assumed was me. But he had never asked (it would have been a serious breach of protocol). I calmly said, “I’m sure it’s nothing. I just gotta make a couple of phone calls. I’ll be downstairs in my bedroom.” With that I took a small hop off the edge of the wooden dock and landed on the yacht, which was tied alongside it, lengthwise. Then I went downstairs to the master suite and picked up the satellite phone and dialed Danny’s cell phone.

The phone rang three times. “Haaawoaaa?” muttered Danny, sounding like Elmer Fudd.

I looked at my watch: It was eleven-thirty. Unbelievable! He was stoned at eleven-thirty in the morning on a Wednesday, a workday! “Danny, what the fuck is wrong with you? Why are you so stoned at the office?”

“No, no, no! I zake off zaday”—take off today—“because I met Tazz”—Todd—“but doze you worry! It all go perfect! Iz done! Clean, no marks!”

Well, at least my worst fears were unfounded. “Who’s minding the store, Danny?”

“I leave Blockhead and Wigwam there. Iz fine! Mad Max there too.”

“Was Todd pissed at you, Danny?”

“Uh-huh,” he muttered. “He crazy bastard, zat lumberjack! He pull out gun and point it at me and tell me I lucky I your friend. He shouldn’t carry gun. Iz against the law!”

He pulled out a gun? In plain sight? That made no sense! Todd might be crazy, but he wasn’t reckless! “I don’t understand, Danny. He pulled out a gun in the street?”

“No, no! I give him briefcase in back of limo. We meet in Bay Terrace Zopping Zenter”—Shopping Center—“in za parking lot. It all go fine. I stay for only a second, then I drive away.”

Christ almighty! What a scene that must’ve been! Todd in a black stretch Lincoln limousine, Danny in a black Rolls-Royce convertible, side by side in the Bay Terrace Shopping Center, where the next-nicest car was bound to be a Pontiac!

Once more I asked, “Are you sure everything went okay?”

“Yes, I sure!” he said indignantly, to which I slammed the phone down right in his ear, not so much because I was pissed at him but because I was the ultimate hypocrite—finding it annoying to speak to a stoned fool when I was sober.

I was about to pick up the phone and dial Carolyn when the phone started ringing. I took a moment to regard the phone, and at that very moment I felt like Mad Max, my pulse quickening with each terrible ring. But rather than answering it, I simply cocked my head to the side and stared at it with contempt.

On the fourth ring someone picked it up. I waited…and prayed. A moment later I heard a menacing little beep and then the voice of Tanji, Captain Marc’s sexy girlfriend, saying, “It’s Carolyn Garret for you, Mr. Belfort, on line two.”

I paused for a brief moment to gather my thoughts and then picked up the handset. “Hey, Carolyn, what’s going on? Is everything all right?”

“Oh, shit—thanks God I finally find you! Jordan, Todd is in jail and—”

I cut her off immediately. “Carolyn, don’t say another word. I’m going to a pay phone and I’ll call you right back. Are you home?”

“Yes, I home. I wait right here for your call.”

“All right; don’t move. Everything will be fine, Carolyn. I promise you.”

I hung up the phone and sat down on the edge of the bed, in a state of disbelief. My mind was racing in a thousand different directions. I felt an odd feeling that I had never felt before. Todd was in jail. In fucking jail! How could it have happened? Would he talk?…No, of course not! If anyone lived by the code of omerta it was Todd Garret! Besides, how many years did he really have to live? He had a fucking lumberjack’s heart beating inside him, for Chrissake! He was always saying how he was living on borrowed time, wasn’t he? Perhaps a trial could be delayed until he was already dead. Immediately I regretted thinking any such thought, although I had to admit there was truth to it.

I took a deep breath—and tried to collect myself. Then I rose from the bed and made a quick beeline for the pay phone.

As I was walking down the dock it occurred to me that I had only five Quaaludes in my possession, which, given the current circumstances, was an entirely unacceptable number. I wasn’t supposed to head back to Long Island for three more days, and my back had really been killing me…sort of. Besides, I’d been an angel for over a month now, and that was long enough.

The moment I reached the phone I picked it up and dialed Janet. As I punched in my calling-card number, I wondered if it would somehow make the call more traceable or, for that matter, more buggable. After a few seconds, though, I dismissed the thought as ridiculous. Using a calling card didn’t make it any easier for the FBI to tap my phone conversation; it was the same as using quarters. Still, it was the thought of a careful, prudent man, so I commended myself for thinking it.

“Janet,” said the prudent man, “I want you to go into the bottom right-hand drawer of my desk and count out forty Ludes; then give them to Wigwam and have him fly them up here on a chopper right now. There’s a private airport a few miles from the harbor. He can land there. I don’t have time to pick him up, so have a limo waiting for—”

Janet cut me off. “I’ll have him there in two hours; don’t worry about it. Is everything okay? You sound upset.”

“Everything’s fine. I just miscalculated before I left and now I’m out. Anyway, my back’s been hurting, so I need to take the edge off.” I hung up the phone without saying good-bye, then picked it right back up and dialed Carolyn at home. The moment she answered I was on her.

“Carolyn, is—”

“OhmyGod, I must tell you what is—”

“Carolyn, don’t—”

“Going on with Tahad! He is—”

“Carolyn, don’t—”

“In jail, and he said that—”

She refused to stop talking, so I screamed: “Carrrrrrrolyn!”

That got her.

“Listen to me, Carolyn, and don’t talk. I’m sorry for yelling at you, but I don’t want you to talk from your house. Do you understand?”

“Oui,” she replied. Even now I noticed that during the heat of the moment she obviously found it soothing to speak in her own language.

“Okay,” I said calmly. “Go to the nearest pay phone and call this number: area code 401-555-1665. That’s where I am right now. Got it?”

“Yes,” she replied calmly, switching back to English. “I write it down. I call you back in few minutes. I must get change.”

“No, just use my calling-card number,” I said, just as calmly.

Five minutes later the phone rang. I picked it up and asked Carolyn to read me the number off the pay phone she was at. Then I hung up, switched to the pay phone next to me, and dialed Carolyn’s pay phone.

She immediately plunged into the details. “…so Tahad waiting in parking lot for Danny, and he finally show up in big-shot Rolls-Royce and he very stoned, swerving around shopping center, almost hitting other cars. So security guards call police because they think Danny driving drunk. He give money to Todd and he leave right away because Todd threaten to kill him for being stoned. But he leave Todd with briefcase. Then Todd saw two police cars with flashing lights and realize what is happening, so he run into video store and hide gun in video box, but police handcuff him anyway. Then police play back security video and see where he hide gun, and they find it and arrest him. Then they go to limousine and search and find money and take it.”

Holy shit! I thought. The money was the least of my problems. The main problem was that Danny was a fucking dead man! He would have to leave town and never come back. Or make some sort of financial compensation to Todd, to buy him off.

Just then it occurred to me that Todd must’ve told all this to Carolyn over the telephone. And if he was still in jail, then he must’ve used the phone from—Shit! Todd was smarter than that! Why would he risk using a phone that was almost certainly tapped—to call his own house, nonetheless?

“When did you last speak to Todd?” I asked, praying there was some explanation.

“I not speak to him. His lawyer call me and tell me this. Todd call him and tell him to get bail money, and then Todd say I must leave to Switzerland tonight, before this become problem. So I book ticket for Tahad’s parents and Dina and me. Rich will sign for Todd and I will give him bail money.”

Christ almighty! This was an awful lot to take in. At least Todd had had enough common sense not to talk on the phone. And insofar as his conversation with his lawyer went, that would be privileged. Yet the most ironic part was that in the middle of the whole thing—while he was sitting in jail—Todd was still trying to get my money overseas. I didn’t know whether to be appreciative of his unwavering commitment to my cause or angry over how reckless he was. I ran the whole thing through my mind, trying to put it all into perspective. The truth was that the police probably thought they’d stumbled onto a drug deal. Todd was the seller, which was why he had a briefcase full of cash, and whoever had been driving the Rolls-Royce was the buyer. I wondered if they had gotten Danny’s license plate? If they had, wouldn’t they have already picked him up? But on what grounds would they arrest him? In truth, they had nothing on Danny. All they had was a briefcase full of cash, nothing more. The main issue was the gun, but that could be dealt with. A good lawyer could most certainly get Todd off with probation and maybe a hefty fine. I would pay the fine—or Danny would pay the fine—and that would be that.

I said to the Bombshell, “Okay, you should go. Todd gave you all the specifics, right? You know who to go see?”

“Yes. I will see Jean Jacques Saurel. I have phone number and I know street very well. It is in shopping area.”

“All right, Carolyn; be careful. Tell the same to Todd’s parents and to Dina. And, also, call Todd’s lawyer and tell him to let Todd know that you spoke to me and that he has nothing to worry about. Tell him that everything will be taken care of. And stress the word everything, Carolyn. You understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes, yes, I do. Don’t worry, Jordan. Tahad love you. He would never say one word, no matter what. I promise you this with all my heart. He will sooner kill himself before he hurt you.”

Those very words made me smile inwardly, even though I knew Todd was incapable of loving any soul on earth, especially himself. Yet Todd’s very persona, the persona of the Jewish Mafioso, made it highly unlikely that he would roll over on me unless he was facing many years in jail.

Having worked things out in my mind, I wished the Bombshell a bon voyage and hung up the phone. As I headed back to the yacht, the only remaining question was whether or not I should call Danny and give him the bad news. Or perhaps it would be wiser to wait until he wasn’t so stoned. Although, now that after the initial wave of panic had subsided, it wasn’t such bad news, after all. It certainly wasn’t good news, but it was more of an unexpected complication than anything else.

Still, there was no denying that those Quaaludes were going to be Danny’s downfall. He had a serious problem with them, and perhaps it was time that he sought help.