The proper way to trade was from the short side, which kept you flush in cash. While it was true that you would lose money as the prices of the stocks went up, it was the equivalent of paying an insurance premium. The way I had managed the Stratton trading account, I allowed the firm to take consistent losses in the day-to-day trading, which ensured that the firm would maintain a cash-rich position and be poised to ring the register on new-issue day. In essence I lost a million dollars a month by trading short but ensured that I could make ten million a month being in the IPO business. To me, it was so obvious that I couldn’t imagine anybody trading any other way.
The question was would the Blockhead and the Chinaman pick up on it—or would Victor’s ego feed right into the very insanity of trading long? Even Danny, who was sharp as a tack, had never fully grasped this concept, or perhaps he had but was such a born risk-taker that he was willing to put the health of the firm on the line to make a few extra million a year. It was impossible to say.
Right on cue, Danny chimed in and said to me, “I’ll tell you the truth: In the beginning I was always nervous when you held major long positions, but over time…I mean…to see all the extra money being made”—he started shaking his head, as if to reinforce his very bullshit—“well…it’s incredible. But it definitely takes balls.”
Kenny, the moron: “Yeah, we’ve made a fortune trading that way. That’s definitely the way to do it, Vic.”
How ironic, I thought. After all these years Kenny still hadn’t the foggiest notion of how I’d managed to keep Stratton at the pinnacle of financial health, in spite of all its problems. I had never traded long—not even once! Except, of course, on new-issue day, when I would let the firm go heavily long for a few carefully chosen minutes, as the price of the units was flying up. But I always knew there was a massive wave of buy tickets coming in at any moment.
Victor said, “I have no problem living with risk in my life. It’s what separates the men from the boys. As long as I know the stock is going up, I’d put my last dime into it. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?” With that, the panda smiled, and once more his eyes disappeared.
I nodded at the Chinaman. “That’s about the size of it, Vic. Besides, if you ever find yourself in a bad position, I’ll always be there to support you until you get back on your feet. Just look at me as your insurance policy.”
We raised our glasses for another toast.
An hour later I was walking through the boardroom with mixed emotions. So far everything was going according to plan, but what of my own future? What was to become of the Wolf of Wall Street? In the end, this whole experience—this wild ride of mine—would become a distant memory, something I would tell Chandler about. I would tell her how, once upon a time, her daddy had been a true player on Wall Street, how he’d owned one of the largest brokerage firms in history, and how all these young kids—kids who called themselves Strattonites—ran around Long Island, spending obscene amounts of money on all sorts of meaningless things.
Yes, Channy, the Strattonites looked up to your daddy, and they called him King. And for that brief time, right around when you were born, your daddy was, indeed, like a king, and he and Mommy lived just like a king and queen, treated like royalty wherever they went. And now your daddy is…who the hell is he? Well, perhaps Daddy could show you some of his press clippings, perhaps that would explain things…or…well, perhaps not. Anyway, everything they say about your daddy is lies, Channy. All lies! The press always lies; you know that, Chandler, right? Just go ask your nana, Suzanne; she’ll tell you! Oh, wait, I forgot, you haven’t seen your nana in a while; she’s in jail with Aunt Patricia, for money laundering. Oops!
What a dark premonition that was! Jesus! I took a deep breath and pushed it aside. I was thirty-one years old and already on the road to becoming a has-been. A cautionary tale! Was it even possible to be a has-been at such a young age? Perhaps I was no different than one of those child actors who grows up to be ugly and gawky. What was that redhead’s name from The Partridge Family? Danny Bona-douche-bag or something? But wasn’t it better to be a has-been than a never-was? It was hard to say, because there was another side to that coin, namely, that once you got used to something it was hard to live without it. I had been able to live without the benefit of the mighty roar for the first twenty-six years of my life, hadn’t I? But now…well, how could I possibly live without it after it had become so much a part of me?
I took a deep breath and steeled myself. I needed to focus on the kids—the Strattonites! They were the ticket! I had a plan and I would stick to it: the slow phaseout; keeping myself behind the scenes; keeping the troops calm; keeping peace among the brokerage firms; and keeping the Depraved Chinaman at bay.
As I approached Janet’s desk, I noticed she had the grim expression on her face that spelled trouble. Her eyes were open a bit wider than usual and her lips were slightly parted. She was sitting on the edge of her seat, and the moment we locked eyes she rose from her chair and headed directly for me. I wondered whether she had somehow caught wind of what was going on with the SEC. The only people who knew were Danny, Ike, and myself, but Wall Street was a funny place like that, and news had a way of traveling remarkably fast. In fact, there was an old Wall Street saying that went: “Good news travels fast, but bad news travels instantly.”
She compressed her lips. “I got a call from Visual Image, and they said they need to speak to you right away. They said it was absolutely urgent they talk to you this afternoon.”
“Who the fuck is Visual Image? I’ve never even heard of them!”
“Yes you have; they’re the ones who did your wedding video, remember? You flew them down to Anguilla; there were two of them, a man and a woman. She had blond hair and he had brown. She was dressed—”
I cut Janet off. “Yeah, yeah, I remember now. I don’t need a full-blown description.” I shook my head in amazement at Janet’s memory for detail. If I hadn’t cut her off she would have told me what color panty hose the girl wore. “Who was it that called: the guy or the girl?”
“The guy. And he sounded nervous. He said that if he didn’t speak to you in the next few hours, it would be a problem.”
A problem? What the fuck? That made no sense! What could my wedding videographer possibly need to speak to me about that was so urgent? Could it be something that happened at my wedding? I took a moment to search my memory…Well, it would be highly unlikely, in spite of the fact that I had received a warning from the tiny Caribbean island of Anguilla. I had flown down three hundred of my closest friends (friends?) for an all-expenses-paid vacation at one of the finest hotels in the world: the Malliouhana. It cost me over a million dollars, and at the end of the week the island’s president informed me that the only reason everyone wasn’t under arrest for drug possession was because I’d given the island so much business that they felt turning a blind eye was the least they could do. But he further assured me that everyone who’d attended would be on a watch list and that if they ever decided to come back to Anguilla they had best leave their drugs behind. That was three years ago though, so this couldn’t have anything to do with that—or could it?
I said to Janet, “Get the guy on the phone. I’ll take it in my office.” I turned and started to walk away, then over my shoulder I said, “By the way, what’s his name?”
“Steve. Steve Burstein.”
A few seconds later the phone on my desk beeped. I exchanged quick hellos with Steve Burstein, the president of Visual Image, a small mom-and-pop operation somewhere on the South Shore of Long Island.
Steve said in a concerned tone: “Um…well…I don’t know quite how to say this to you…I mean…you were really good to my wife and me. You…you treated us like guests at your own wedding. You and Nadine couldn’t have been any nicer to us. And it was really the nicest wedding I’ve ever been to and—”
I interrupted him. “Listen, Steve, I appreciate the fact that you enjoyed my wedding, but I’m kind of busy right no
w. Why don’t you just tell me what’s going on.”
“Well,” he replied, “there were two FBI agents in here today and they asked me for a copy of your wedding video.”
And just like that, I knew my life would never be the same again.
CHAPTER 23
WALKING A FINE LINE
Nine days after I’d received that poisonous phone call from Visual Image, I was sitting in world-famous Rao’s restaurant in East Harlem, engaged in a heated debate with legendary private investigator Richard Bo Dietl, known simply to his friends as Bo.
Although we were at a table for eight, there would be only one other person joining us this evening, namely, Special Agent Jim Barsini*6 of the FBI, who was a casual friend of Bo’s and, hopefully, would soon be a casual friend of mine too. Bo had arranged this meeting, and Barsini was due to arrive in fifteen minutes.
At this particular moment, Bo was doing the talking and I was doing the listening, or, more accurately, Bo was lecturing and I was listening and grimacing. The topic was an inspired notion I’d had to try to bug the FBI, which, according to Bo, was one of the most outlandish things he’d ever heard.
Bo was saying, “…and that’s simply not the way you go about things, Bo.” Bo had this odd habit of calling his friends Bo, which I found confusing sometimes, particularly when I was Luded out. Thankfully, I was able to follow him just fine tonight, because I was sober as a judge, which seemed like the appropriate state to be in when meeting an FBI agent for the first time, especially one who I was hoping to befriend—and then subsequently gather intelligence from.
Nevertheless, I did have four Ludes in my pocket, which at this very moment were burning a hole in my gray slacks, and in the inside pocket of my navy-blue sport jacket I had an eight ball of coke, which was calling my name in a most seductive tone. But, no, I was determined to stay strong—at least until after Agent Barsini went back to wherever it was FBI agents went back to after they ate dinner, which was probably home. Originally I had planned to eat light, so as not to interfere with my upcoming high, but right now the smell of roasted garlic and home-cooked tomato sauce was bathing my olfactory nerve in a most delicious way.
“Listen, Bo,” continued Bo, “getting information out of the FBI isn’t difficult in a case like this. In fact, I already got some for you. But listen to me—before I tell you anything—there are certain protocols you gotta follow here or else you’re gonna get your ass caught in a sling. The first is that you don’t go around planting bugs in their fucking offices.” He started shaking his head in amazement. It was something he’d been doing a lot of since we sat down fifteen minutes ago. “The second is that you don’t try bribing their secretaries—or anyone else, for that matter.” With that, he shook his head some more. “And you don’t follow their agents around, trying to find shit out about their personal lives.” This time he shook his head quickly and began rolling his eyes up in his head, the way a person does after they’ve just heard something that defies logic in such a dramatic way that they have to shake off the effect.
I stared out the restaurant’s window to avoid Bo’s blazing gaze, at which point I found myself staring right smack into the gloomy groin of East Harlem and wondering why on earth the best Italian restaurant in New York City had to pick this fucking cesspool of a neighborhood for its location. But then I reminded myself that Rao’s had been in business for over a hundred years, since the late 1800s, and Harlem was a different sort of neighborhood back then.
And the fact that Bo and I were sitting alone at a table for eight was a much bigger deal than it seemed—given the fact that a dinner reservation at Rao’s needed to be booked five years in advance. In truth, though, getting a reservation at this quaint little anachronism was all but impossible. All twelve of the restaurant’s tables were owned, “condo-style,” by a select handful of New Yorkers, who more than being rich were very well connected.
Physically, Rao’s was no great shakes. On this particular evening, the restaurant was decorated for Christmas, which had nothing to do with that fact that it was January 14. In August, it would still be decorated for Christmas. That was the way of things at Rao’s, where everything was reminiscent of a much simpler time, where food was served family-style, and Italian music played from a fifties-style jukebox in the corner. As the night progressed, Frankie Pellegrino, the restaurant’s owner, would sing for his guests, as men of respect congregated at the bar and smoked cigars and greeted one another Mafia-style, while the women stared at them adoringly, the way they did back in the good-old days, whenever those were. And the men would rise from their chairs and bow to the women each time they went to the bathroom, the way they did back in the good-old days, whenever those were.
On any given night, half the restaurant was filled with world-class athletes, A-list movie stars, and captains of industry, while the other half was filled with real-life mobsters.
Anyway, it was Bo, not I, who was the table’s well-connected owner, and true to this tiny restaurant’s star-studded list of patrons, Bo Dietl was a man whose star was seriously on the rise. Only forty years old, Bo was a legend in the making. Back in his day, in the mid 1980s, he was one of the most highly decorated cops in NYPD history—making over seven hundred arrests, in some of New York’s toughest neighborhoods, including Harlem. He had made a big name for himself cracking cases that no one else could crack, finally jumping into the national spotlight after solving one of the most heinous crimes ever committed in Harlem: the rape of a white nun by two cash-strapped crack fiends.
At first glance, though, Bo didn’t look that tough, what with his boyishly handsome face, perfectly coiffed beard, and slightly thinning light brown hair, which he wore combed straight back over his roundish skull. He wasn’t a huge guy—maybe five-ten, two hundred pounds—but he was broad in the chest and thick in the neck, the latter of which was the size of a gorilla’s. Bo was one of the sharpest dressers in town, favoring $2,000 silk suits and heavily starched white dress shirts with French cuffs and wiseguy collars. He wore a gold watch heavy enough to do wrist curls with and a diamond pinky ring the size of an ice cube.
It was no secret that much of Bo’s success when it came to cracking cases had to do with his rearing. He was born and raised in a part of Ozone Park, Queens, where he was surrounded by mobsters on one side and cops on the other. In consequence, he developed the unique ability to walk a fine line between the two—using the respect he’d garnered with local Mafia chieftains to crack cases that couldn’t be cracked through traditional means. Over time, he developed a reputation as a man who kept his contacts confidential and who used the information passed along to him only toward stamping out street crime, which seemed to get under his skin more than anything else. He was loved and respected by his friends, and he was loathed and feared by his enemies.
Never one to put up with bureaucratic bullshit, Bo retired from the NYPD at thirty-five and quickly parlayed his storied reputation (and even more storied connections) into one of the fastest-growing and most well-respected private security firms in America. It was for this very reason that two years ago I had first sought out Bo and retained his services—to build and maintain a first-class security operation within Stratton Oakmont.
More than once I had called upon Bo to scare away the occasional mid-level thug who made the mistake of trying to muscle in on Stratton’s operations. Just what Bo would say to these people I wasn’t quite sure. All I knew was that I would make one phone call to Bo, who would then “sit the person down,” at which point I would never hear from them again. (Although one time I did receive a rather nice bouquet of flowers.)
At the upper levels of the Mob there was a silent understanding, independent of Bo, that rather than trying to muscle in on Stratton’s operations, it was more profitable for the bosses to send their young bucks to work for us, so they could be properly trained. Then, after a year or so, these Mafioso plants would leave quietly—almost gentlemanly, in fact—so as not to disturb Stratton’s op
erations. Then they would open Mafia-backed brokerage firms at the behest of their masters.
Over the last two years, Bo had become involved with all aspects of Stratton’s security—even investigating the companies we were taking public, making sure that we weren’t getting scammed by fraudulent operators. And unlike most of his competitors, Bo Dietl and Associates wasn’t coming up with the sort of generic information any computer geek could pull off LexisNexis. No, Bo’s people were getting their fingernails dirty, uncovering things one would think impossible to uncover. And while there was no denying that his services didn’t come cheap, what you got was value for your money.
In point of fact: Bo Dietl was the best in the business.
I was still staring out the window when Bo said to me, “What’s on your mind, Bo? You’re staring out that fucking window like you’re gonna find some answers in the street.”
I paused for a brief moment, considering whether or not I should tell him that the only reason I’d considered bugging the FBI was because of the tremendous success I’d had at bugging the SEC, which was something he’d inadvertently paved the way for by introducing me to the former CIA guys who sold me the bugs behind his back. One of the bugs looked like an electrical plug, and it had been sticking in a wall outlet in the conference room for over a year, drawing power from the very outlet itself, so it never ran out of batteries. It was a wonderful little contraption!
Nevertheless, I decided now was not the time to share that little secret with Bo. I said, “It’s just that I’m dead serious about fighting this whole thing. I have no intention of rolling over and playing dead because some FBI agent is running around asking questions about me. I have too much at stake here, and there are too many people involved just to walk away from this. So now that your mind’s at ease, tell me what you found out, okay?”
The Wolf of Wall Street Page 29