The Wolf of Wall Street (14 page)

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.