Chandler, however, didn't play video games; she played with Barbie dolls and she played house and dress-up and she liked to watch TV—of the American variety—so she and KGB had very little in common. And that bothered me; it bothered me that I never saw KGB reaching out to her. Indeed, as with Carter, she was always nice and always quick to offer a warm smile, but there was still that same disconnect.
In my mind it was simple: KGB was the adult and Chandler and Carter were the children, so the ball was in her court, not theirs. Or was I expecting too much? She wasn't the mother of my children, so perhaps it was unreasonable to expect her to be a second mother to them. Maybe a degree of casual indifference was healthy, maybe it was normal, and maybe I should just thank my lucky stars that KGB was kind. No, I thought, kindness wasn't enough. Apathy is its own form of cruelty, and children can spot it a mile away.
Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum was John Macaluso, the Duchess's boyfriend. Just last week he'd called me out of the blue and suggested that we meet for a cup of coffee. He was spending a lot of time with my kids, he said warmly, and he wanted to assure me that he would always try his best to be a positive influence in their lives. It was a classy move, to say the least, and when we met a few days later at the Old Brookville Diner, we hit it off instantly.
He was about my height and was thin and wiry and bursting at the seams with energy. He was handsome, with salt-and-pepper hair and prominent Italian features, but he was charismatic more than anything. We spent an hour exchanging war stories—carefully avoiding the subject of my failed marriage to the Duchess or his current relationship with her—while I resisted the urge to ask him if she moaned, “Come for me, my little prince!” while they were hav**g s*x. Yet, with all the laughing and smiling, there was one issue that hung over the meeting like a dark cloud.
Finally he brought it up.
“You know, it really sucks that I live in California and Nadine lives in New York,” he said wearily. “It figures I'd fall in love with a woman who lives three thousand miles away!”
And that was it: The cat was out of the bag.
There was a major problem—he knew it and I knew it—and it wasn't about to go away on its own. Either he would have to move here or she would want to move there. And knowing the Duchess's attorney—that fat bastard Dominic Barbara, with his notoriously fat mouth and penchant for bathing his even fatter ass in the limelight—he would use my legal predicament as leverage.
John was no fool; upon seeing my reaction, he quickly added that Nadine would never do anything behind my back. She knew how close I was with the kids and was always saying what a good father I was. And, with that, we dropped it, although I think we both knew that at some point this issue would rear its ugly head again.
And the lovely KGB—where did she stand in all this?
Just watching her with Carter right now, united by their love of the genetically enhanced bandicoot, gave me hope for everything she might be. Perhaps she could learn to love my children, and perhaps I could learn to love her the same way I had once loved the Duchess and the way I had once loved Denise—for, in truth, I felt the same disconnect in my own relationship with her that I sensed between her and my children.
Perhaps, over time, the gulf between our cultures could become our greatest strength. Americans, after all, had a great soul of their own, didn't they? According to Dostoyevsky, the essence of the great Russian soul was the ever-present and unquenchable need to suffer, and, according to yours truly, the essence of the great American soul was: Why should we suffer at all when our parents and grandparents suffered for us? So, together, couldn't KGB and I unite into a perfect soul? It would be my American optimism mixed with her Russian fatalism, the sum of which would be perfection.
Either way, we had a few years to bridge the gulf. The new millennium was just around the corner—only eighty days away—and it would be three or four years after that until I got sentenced.
Then the phone rang.
“Blyad!” sputtered KGB. “Please pick up phone! It disturb my play.”
Carter turned to me and nodded. “It disturb her play.”
“Disturbs,” I said to Carter, fearing KGB's influence over his language skills, and I reached over to the phone on the side table and picked it up. “Hello?”
“It's your lawyer,” said Magnum, in an octave of C-minor. “How are you?”
“I'm doing good,” I replied automatically, and then realized after the fact that I actually was doing good. Yes, I thought, for the first time in a long time I was approaching something close to happiness. “What's going on?” I asked.
“There's been a flurry of activity at the U.S. Attorney's today.”
I felt my heart skip a beat. “Oh, really? In reference to what?”
“Are you familiar with an AUSA named Dan Alonso?”
“No,” I replied quickly. “What about him?”
“Well, he's your new AUSA,” answered Magnum. “He called Nick and me this morning to give us a heads-up. Joel is leaving the office next week and Alonso has been assigned to your case.”
I crossed my fingers: “So what's he like? Is he a nice guy or is he a douche bag?”
“Welllllll…” said Magnum, “on a scale of one to ten, with a douche bag being a one and a nice guy being a ten, I would say Alonso falls somewhere between a ten and an eleven.”
“You're kidding!” I exclaimed.
“Shhhh!” snapped KGB. “I cannot concentrate!”
Carter looked up and put his forefinger to his lips. Then he looked back at the screen. I chuckled and said into the phone, “Is he really that good?”
“Yes,” answered Magnum, “he really is. He's tough, fair, very smart, an excellent litigator, and, above all, he's got a big heart. I've already broached the subject of reducing your obstruction charge, and he said he's willing to sit down and talk about it. He wants to meet you first, and then he'll let us plead our case. I think we're in very good shape there.”
I felt a wave of relief come over me. “Well, this is great news, Greg, really great.”
“Yeah, it is,” he agreed. “On a separate note, though, I got a very strange call from Joel Cohen this morning. He was saying something about you being in Atlantic City a few months ago and that you refused to identify yourself. He hinted that you were trying to launder money or something. I know that's not true, right?”
My mouth immediately went dry, my gut drawing conclusions faster than my mind could come to them. “Of course not!” I sputtered. “That's total bullshit! I wasn't trying to launder money! It was a misunderstanding!”
“So you were there?” asked Magnum, seeming extremely surprised.
I already knew where this was going.
In the end, I could prove that I hadn't tried to launder money, but I couldn't prove that I hadn't violated my bail restrictions. I had left New York without permission. “Yeah, I was there,” I said softly. “Hold on a second; let me switch rooms.”
On my way out of the TV room, I took a moment to regard the innocent face of my son. He had had a rocky start, Carter, yet he had grown strong. A terrible wave of sadness came over me. I felt like I had let him down.
Inside the master bedroom, I picked up the phone of the future and sat down on the edge of the bed, then went about telling my lawyer the story, all the sordid details—starting with the luscious yet underage Kiley and finishing with the stone-faced woman in the cashier's cage who refused to give me my money back. Then I said, “They're not going to break my cooperation over this, right?”
“No,” he replied quickly, “not if what you're telling me is true.”
Trying to maintain control, I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then I started spitting nails at my attorney, swearing up and down that I was telling the truth this time. First I swore on my eyes, then I swore on my children's eyes, then I swore on my unborn children's eyes, and then I swore on Magnum's children's eyes too.
Finally, he said, “All right! I believe you! I believe you! You can stop selling me now. Jesus! You know, either way, we still have some serious damage control to do. What kind of relationship do you have with your pretrial-services officer?”
“Pat Mancini?” I replied, sensing a thin ray of hope. “He's great!” I chose not to bring up my misleading phone call to Pat, with its vague reference of being stuck in the city, without saying which city. “Why do you ask?”
“I ask because he's the one who can ultimately turn your lights out here. If he writes a letter to the judge about your little helicopter excursion—destination, Atlantic City; companion, underage girl; seed money for gambling, a bag full of the government's cash—it could be a problem, Jordan. It doesn't look like the behavior of a contrite man. You understand?”
And that was when it hit me: the sheer audacity of my actions! It wasn't so much that I had violated my release conditions (that was bad enough on its own) but how I had done it.
If I had driven to Atlantic City in a beat-up station wagon with my seventy-year-old mother and a bunch of rolled-up quarters, then Judge Gleeson would probably say, “Oh, it's just the case of a good son trying to spend some quality time with his mom,” and then he would let me off with a warning. But I had stolen $100 million and was being given a second chance, and how did I show my appreciation? I took a secret helicopter ride to the Sodom and Gomorrah of New Jersey with an underage model. And to finance my trip I took an interest-free loan from the federal government!
With a sinking heart, I said, “So what happens next?”
There were a few moments of silence, then Magnum said, “Nothing, hopefully. I'll call Joel back and offer your side of the story, and then I'll tell him that I'll work it out with Alonso, although this is not exactly the best way to start a relationship with him.” He paused for a moment. Then: “But what are you gonna do, right?”
“Yeah, right,” I said tonelessly. “What are you gonna do.”
We spent a few more minutes strategizing, but there wasn't really much we could do. The most important thing, we agreed, was to make sure this never made it before Judge Gleeson. He was a conservative man, said Magnum, an altogether rational man, who lived his life by the rules. This was just the sort of thing to raise his ire.
After we hung up the phone, I sat there on the edge of the bed for a moment, dumbfounded. I must have said a thousand times, in jest, that I was my own worst enemy, but this time it wasn't funny. Once more I had put my freedom in jeopardy, and for what? In retrospect, my decision seemed utterly mind-boggling. Was I really that self-destructive? I didn't think so, yet from the outside looking in, that's exactly what I appeared to be. What malfunction did I possess that caused me to do these things, that caused me to take these wild risks, even when there was no upside?
I took a deep breath and fought down the urge to beat myself up any further. What was done was done. If Judge Gleeson found out about this, he would throw me in the slammer on the spot—at which point I would lose Yulia, the children would be heartbroken, the Duchess would move to California, Meadow Lane would be forfeited in my absence, my furniture and clothing would be auctioned off for pennies on the dollar, and my plan to trade stocks would be thwarted. Yet my expenses with the Duchess and the children would continue—so when I finally got sentenced, three years from now, and I emerged from jail a few years after that, I would be nak*d, alone, penniless, homeless, and my kids would live three thousand miles away, calling John Macaluso Daddy!
CHAPTER 24
THE FATE GOD STRIKES BACK
he next seven days were gut-wrenching.
Upon hanging up with Magnum, I called Pat Mancini, who, not surprisingly, had just received a phone call from the Bastard, asking if he'd given me authorization to travel to Atlantic City. Pat, of course, told him that he hadn't, to which the Bastard suggested that he inform Judge Gleeson of my bail violation.
Pat told him that he would think about it.
Thankfully he told me that he wouldn't; in fact, he actually felt bad for me, he said. Yes, I was definitely a schmuck for taking a helicopter to Atlantic City, but in a way I had been set up for the fall. “There's only so long a man can stay under house arrest before he f**ks up,” Pat explained. “It's like the old saying: You leave a man just enough rope to hang himself.”
Before he hung up the phone, he said something that I knew I would be hearing a lot for a few weeks, namely: “For a smart guy, Jordan, you do some pretty stupid things!” Then he hung up on me.
I passed the rest of the weekend in a state of relative calm. Then, on Monday morning, all hell broke loose.
It started when Mancini called Magnum to say that he had received a scathing letter from the Bastard, demanding that Pat write a letter to Gleeson, informing him of my trip to Atlantic City. And, just for good measure, the Bastard wrote that all the high points of my trip—the young girl, the bag of cash, the chopper-must be included in the letter to Gleeson, lest Pat be accused of painting a misleading picture for the judge.
Magnum placed an emergency phone call to Joel—to beg him to rescind the letter to Mancini—only to get a recorded message that went something like: “Hi, this is Joel Cohen, and I'm no longer with the U.S. Attorney's Office. I will be on vacation for the next two weeks…”
Yes, the Bastard had vanished, and this was his revenge.
He had wanted to revoke my bail over the Dave Beall incident but had been overruled. So this was payback, and it was a bitch!
Magnum, however, was not ready to go down without a fight, so he hopped on the subway and went down to the U.S. Attorney's Office to meet with Alonso, who agreed to call Mancini and tell him that he could handle this “in house.” My restrictions would be tightened for a few months, and then ultimately Alonso would make a motion before Gleeson to have my ankle bracelet removed—getting me out of Mancini's hair once and for all.
Sure, Mancini said, that would be wonderful. The only problem was that he had just hit the send button on the e-mail, and right now, at this very moment, Judge Gleeson was probably reading the letter, which did indeed include all the dirty details. When Magnum informed me of this, I dropped the phone, ran to the toilet, and vomited. Then I ran back to the phone and asked Magnum what this meant—which is to say, was my goose cooked for sure now?
He told me that it wasn't; there was still a fifty-fifty shot that Gleeson would read the letter and take no action. After all, the letter had not been accompanied by a request for a hearing. With a little bit of luck, Gleeson would just shake his head in disbelief, lose a bit of respect for me, and then move on with his day.
No such luck.
On Thursday morning, at 8:30 a.m. sharp, I heard a very disturbing sound: the phone ringing.
Oh, Jesus! I thought. I looked to my left, and there was KGB. As always, she was sleeping soundly, her blond Soviet head poking out from beneath the white silk comforter.
It was Magnum. His first few words were lost on me, but his next few words weren't: “Unfortunately, I just received a fax from Gleeson, and he's ordered a hearing.”
“When?” I asked, in a state far beyond panic.
“Tomorrow morning, ten a.m.”
I stole a glance at KGB. Well, it was nice knowing you! I thought.
“I guess I'm dead f**king meat,” I said rather calmly.
“Not necessarily,” he replied. “I think there's still a way out of this. The key is that we need to approach Gleeson as a united front. I already spoke to both Mancini and Alonso. Mancini will be there too, tomorrow, and he promised he'd stand up for you. He's gonna say that it was a misunderstanding and that, in his mind, you can still be trusted to live up to your bail restrictions.”
“And what about Alonso? What's he gonna say?”
“Like I told you, when it comes to AUSAs, Dan Alonso is about as good as they get. So, in spite of him never meeting you before, he's willing to stand up for you too. I'm meeting with him later today, and we're going to work out a package that we can sell to Gleeson. There'll be some severe restrictions for a while—no travel, in your house by six p.m., no more late nights in the city—but it's much better than going to jail right now, right?”
“Yeah, it is,” I replied. “And what are the chances of Gleeson going along with this?”
“Close to a hundred percent,” Magnum said confidently. “It's very rare that a judge goes against the recommendation of the U.S. attorney. And the fact that Mancini's on board pretty much seals the deal.”
Excellent, I thought. There was no reason to worry.
The United States Courthouse at 225 Cadman Plaza was enveloped by an irreducible despair. No one, it seemed, really wanted to be there—from the lawyers, to the defendants, to the clerks, to the marshals, to the court reporters, to the people who swept the building's six sprawling floors, to the judges themselves. Everyone looked either bored, desperate, or on the verge of tears. And while you might find an occasional smile from someone who had just been acquitted of a criminal charge, for every broad smile there was a frown. After all, for every winner there was a loser.
Except in my case.
It was Friday morning, a few minutes before ten, and my lawyers and I were standing in a long, broad hallway outside Judge Gleeson's courtroom. Save a few wooden benches against the walls, the hallway was completely bare. The benches looked about as comfortable as the linoleum floor. Between the benches were four soundproof doors, two on each side, and each leading into a separate courtroom.
Just then Magnum looked down at the top of my head and said, “Look, here comes Alonso now,” and he pointed to a tall, slender figure walking toward us. At first glance he looked more like a movie star than an assistant United States attorney. Tall, lean, good-looking, immaculately groomed, and possessing a surprisingly warm smile, he was everything the Bastard wasn't—namely, a picture of grace and gentility. He looked like the actor George Hamilton, without the tan.
“So you're Jordan Belfort,” said Dan Alonso, extending his hand for a shake. “You don't look capable of causing so much commotion!”
I smiled and shook his hand warmly, wondering if he was making some vague reference to my height. After all, he was every bit of six foot two, and Magnum's head was nearly scraping the twelve-foot-high cement ceiling. I took a step toward the Yale-man, for height-protection, and I said, “Well, looks can be deceiving, right?”
Alonso nodded and shook my hand firmly.
Magnum said, “I promise you, Alonso, this is the end of the commotion. Jordan has lost his desire to fly around in helicopters with bags of money. Right, Jordan?”