But then, as if by silent cue, they all stopped at precisely the same moment and returned to whatever it was they’d been doing. In the case of the sushi chefs, it meant rolling and folding and slicing and dicing. In the case of the waitresses, it meant serving oversize vats of Premium sake and Kirin beer to the young and the thirsty, and enormous wooden sailboats filled with overpriced sushi and sashimi to the rich and the hungry.
And just when you thought it was safe, the door swung open once more, and the madness repeated itself, as the wildly animated staff of Tenjin came swooping down on the next group of Strattonites and bathed them in Japanese pomp and circumstance, as well as heaping doses of what I was certain was unadulterated Japanese bullshit.
Welcome to lunch hour—Stratton style!
At this very moment, the alternative universe was exerting its full force on this tiny corner of planet earth. Dozens of sports cars and stretch limousines blocked traffic outside the restaurant, while inside the restaurant young Strattonites carried on their time-honored tradition of acting like packs of untamed wolves. Of the restaurant’s forty tables, only two were occupied by non-Strattonites, or civilians, as we called them. Perhaps they had inadvertently stumbled upon Tenjin while searching for a quiet place to enjoy a nice relaxing meal. Whatever the case, there was no doubt they had been entirely unaware of the bizarre fate about to befall them. After all, as lunch progressed, the drugs would start kicking in.
Yes, the clock had just struck one and some of the Strattonites were already getting off. It wasn’t hard to tell which of them were Luded out; they were the ones standing on the tabletops, slurring and drooling and reciting war stories. Fortunately, the sales assistants were required to stay in the boardroom—manning the phones and catching up on paperwork—so everyone still had their clothes on and nobody was rutting away in the bathrooms or under the tables.
I was sitting in a private alcove at the rear of the restaurant, watching this very madness unfold while pretending to listen to the ramblings of Kenny Greene, the blockheaded moron, who was spewing out his own version of unadulterated bullshit. Meanwhile, Victor Wang, the Depraved Chinaman, was nodding his panda-size head at everything his moronic friend was saying, although I was certain he knew Kenny was a moron too and was only pretending to agree with him.
The Blockhead was saying, “…is the exact reason why you stand to make so much money here, JB. I mean, Victor is the sharpest guy I know.” He reached over and patted the Depraved Chinaman on his enormous back. “Next to you, of course, but that goes without saying.”
I smiled a bogus smile and said, “Well, gee, Kenny, thanks for the vote of confidence!”
Victor chuckled at his friend’s idiocy, then flashed me one of his hideous smiles, causing his eyes to become so narrow they all but disappeared.
Kenny, however, had never really mastered the concept of irony. In consequence, he had taken my offering of thanks at face value and was now beaming with great pride. “Anyway, the way I figure it, it’s only gonna take four hundred thousand or so in start-up capital to really get this thing off the ground. If you want, you can give it to me in cash and I’ll filter it to Victor through my mother”—his mother?—“and you don’t have to even worry about it leaving a bad paper trail”—a bad paper trail?—“because my mother and Victor own some real estate together, so they can justify it like that. Then we’ll need a few key stockbrokers to help get the pump going and, most importantly, a big allocation of the next new issue. The way I figure it is…”
I quickly tuned out. Kenny was bursting at the seams with excitement, and every word that escaped his lips was utter nonsense.
Neither Victor nor Kenny was aware of the SEC’s settlement offer. I wouldn’t let them in on that for a few more days, not until both of them had gotten themselves so wet in the pants over the fabulous future of Duke Securities that Stratton Oakmont would seem all but expendable. Only then would I tell them.
Just then I caught a glimpse of Victor out of the corner of my eye, and I took a moment to regard him. Just looking at the Depraved Chinaman on an empty stomach made me want to eat him! Why this massive Chinaman looked so succulent had always baffled me, although it probably had most to do with his skin, which was smoother than a newborn baby’s. And beneath that velvety soft skin were a dozen layers of lavish Chinese fat, which would be perfect for cooking; and beneath that were a dozen more layers of indestructible Chinese muscle, which would be perfect for eating; and on the very surface of it all, he sported the most delicious Chinese tint, which was the exact color of fresh tupelo honey.
The end result was that every time I laid eyes on Victor Wang, I envisioned him as a suckling pig, and I felt like shoving an apple in his mouth and sticking a skewer up his ass and throwing him on a rotisserie and basting him in sweet and sour sauce and then inviting some friends over to eat him—luau style!
“…and Victor will always stay loyal,” continued the Blockhead, “and you stand to make more money off Duke Securities than off Biltmore and Monroe Parker combined.”
I shrugged my shoulders, then said, “Perhaps, Kenny, but that’s not my primary concern here. Don’t get me wrong—I’m planning on making a lot of money. I mean, after all, why shouldn’t all of us make a lot? But what’s most important to me here, what I’m really trying to accomplish, is to secure your and Victor’s futures. If I can do that and make a few extra million a year at the same time, then I’ll consider the whole thing a huge success.” I paused for a few moments to let my bullshit sink in and tried getting a quick read on how they were taking my sudden change of heart.
So far so good, I thought. “Anyway, we have our SEC trial coming up in less than six months, and who knows how it’ll end up? As good as things look, there may come a point when it might make sense to settle the case. And if that day comes, I want to make sure everybody has their exit visas stamped and ready. Believe it or not, I’ve actually wanted to get Duke up and running for a while now, but the issue of my Judicate stock has been hanging over my head. I still can’t sell it for two more weeks, so everything we do has to be kept secret for now. I can’t overestimate the importance of that. Understood?”
Victor nodded his panda head in understanding, and said, “I won’t breathe a word to anybody. And as far as my Judicate stock goes, I don’t even care about it. We all stand to make so much money on Duke that if I never get to sell a share I don’t even give a shit.”
At this point, Kenny chimed in: “You see, JB—I told you! Victor’s head is in the right spot; he’s completely with the program.” Once more, he reached over and patted the Chinaman’s enormous back.
Victor then said, “I also want you to know that I swear complete loyalty to you. Just tell me what stocks you want me to buy and I’ll buy the shit out of them. You’ll never see a share back until you ask for it.”
I smiled and said, “That’s why I’m agreeing to this, Victor, because I trust you and I know you’ll do the right thing. And, of course, because I think you’re a sharp guy and you’ll make a big success of it.” And words are cheap, I thought. In fact, all this goodwill on Victor’s part was complete crap, and I was willing to bet my very life on it. The Chinaman was incapable of being loyal to anybody or anything, especially himself, who he would inadvertently f**k over to feed his own warped ego.
According to plan, Danny showed up fifteen minutes after we sat down, which I had calculated as the appropriate amount of time for Kenny to relish his moment of glory without Danny being there to rain on his parade. After all, he deeply resented Danny for having taken over his slot as my number one. Skipping over Kenny was something I’d felt bad about, but it was something I’d had to do. Still, it was a shame he had to take the fall with Victor, especially since I was certain that Kenny believed every word he said to me—about Victor staying loyal, and all the rest of that jargon. But Kenny’s weakness was that he still looked at Victor through the eyes of a teenager. He still worshipped him as a successful coke dealer, while he was merely a successful pot dealer, which was one step down on the drug-dealing food chain.
Anyway, I had already had my sit-down with Danny when I got back to Stratton after my meeting with Ike—explaining my plan to him in intimate detail, holding back very little. When I was finished, his response had been the expected one.
“In my mind,” he’d said, “you’ll always own Stratton, and sixty cents of every dollar will always be yours. And that’s whether you take an office down the street or you decide to sail your yacht around the world.”
Now, an hour later, he had arrived at Tenjin, and he immediately poured himself a large cup of sake. Then he refilled all three of our cups and held up his own, as if to make a toast. Danny said, “To friendship and loyalty, and to getting scrummed by Blue Chips tonight.”
“Here, here!” I exclaimed, and the four of us clinked our white porcelain cups together. Then we downed the warm fiery brew.
I said to Kenny and Victor, “Listen, I haven’t really spoken to Danny about what’s going on with Duke”—a lie—“so let me give him the quick rundown and bring him up to speed, okay?”
Victor and Kenny nodded, and I quickly plunged into the details. When I got to the subject of where Duke should be located, I turned to Victor and said, “I’ll give you a couple of options: The first is to go to New Jersey, just over the George Washington Bridge, and open the firm there. Your best bet would be Fort Lee, or maybe Hackensack. Either way, you’ll have no trouble recruiting there. You’ll be able to pull kids from all over North Jersey and then some reverse commuters, kids living in Manhattan who are sick of working there. The second option would be to go into Manhattan itself; but that’s a double-edged sword. On one side, there’re a million kids there, so you won’t have any trouble recruiting, but on the other side you’re gonna find it hard to build loyalty there.
“One of the keys to Stratton is that we’re the only game in town. I mean, just look at this restaurant, for example.” I motioned with my head to all the tables. “All you see here are Strattonites. So what you have, Victor, is a self-contained society”—I resisted the urge to use the word cult, which was more appropriate—“where they don’t get to hear the alternative point of view. If you open an office in Manhattan, your guys are gonna be having lunch with stockbrokers from a thousand different firms. It might not seem too important right now, but, trust me, in the future it will be important, especially if you start getting bad press or if your stocks start crashing. Then you’ll be very happy that you’re in a place where nobody’s whispering negative things in your brokers’ ears. Anyway, that being said, I’ll still let it be your call.”
Victor nodded his panda head slowly, deliberately, as if he were weighing the pros and cons. I found this to be almost laughable, insofar as the chances of Victor agreeing to go to New Jersey were slim and nil, and as the saying went, slim had already left town. Victor’s giant ego would never allow him to pick New Jersey. After all, the state didn’t resonate with wealth and success and, most importantly, a place for players. No, Victor would want to open his firm right in the heart of Wall Street, whether it made sense or not. And that was fine with me. It would make it that much easier to destroy him when the time came.