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 f**king 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 f**k 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 f**king 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 f**king 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.