Текст книги "Catch the Wolf of Wall Street"

Автор книги: Jordan Belfort

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ALSO BY JORDAN BELFORT

The Wolf of Wall Street

To my love, Anne Koppe, for being such a good sport

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This book is a work of memoir; it is a true story based on my best recollections of various events in my life. Where indicated, the names and identifying characteristics of certain people mentioned in the book have been changed in order to protect their privacy. In some instances, I rearranged and/or compressed events and time periods in service of the narrative, and I re-created dialogue to match my best recollection of those exchanges.

PROLOGUE

CROCODILE TEARS

September 2, 1998

ou'd think that anyone who was facing thirty years in jail and a hundred-million-dollar fine would be ready to settle down and play things straight. But, no, I must be some sort of glutton for punishment, or maybe I'm just my own worst enemy.

Whatever the case, I'm the Wolf of Wall Street. Remember me? The investment banker who partied like a rock star, the one whose life was sheer insanity? The one with the choirboy face, the innocent smile, and the recreational drug habit that could sedate Guatemala? You remember. I wanted to be young and rich, so I hopped on the Long Island Railroad and headed down to Wall Street to seek my fortune—only to come up with a brainstorm that inspired me to bring my own version of Wall Street out to Long Island instead.

And what a brainstorm it was! By my twenty-seventh birthday, I had built one of the largest brokerage firms in America. It was a place where the young and the uneducated would come to get rich beyond their wildest dreams.

My firm's name was Stratton Oakmont, although, in retrospect, it should have been Sodom and Gomorrah. After all, it wasn't every firm that sported hookers in the basement, drug dealers in the parking lot, exotic animals in the boardroom, and midget-tossing competitions on Fridays.

In my mid-thirties, I had all the trappings of extreme Wall Street wealth—mansions, yachts, private jets, helicopters, limos, armed bodyguards, throngs of domestic servants, drug dealers on speed dial, hookers who took credit cards, police looking for handouts, politicians on the payroll, enough exotic cars to open my own exotic-car dealership—and a loyal and loving blond second wife named Nadine.

Actually, you may have seen Nadine on TV in the 1990s; she was that wildly sexy blonde who tried to sell you Miller Lite Beer during Monday Night Football.She had the face of an angel, although it was her legs and ass that got her the job; well, that and her perky young breasts, which she had recently augmented to a C-cup, after giving birth to the second of our two children. A son!

Nadine and I were living what I had come to think of as Lifestyles of the Rich and Dysfunctional—a sexed-up, drugged-up, hyped-up, over-the-top version of the American Dream. We were careening down the fast lane, at 200 miles per hour, with one fingertip on the steering wheel, never signaling, and never looking back. (Who would want to?) The wreckage of the past was astonishing. It was far too painful to look back; it was much easier just to plunge forward and keep speeding down the road, praying that the past wouldn't catch up with us. But, of course, it did.

In fact, I was teetering on the brink of disaster after a small army of FBI agents raided my Long Island estate and led me away in handcuffs. It had happened on a warm Tuesday evening, the week before Labor Day, less than two months after my thirty-sixth birthday. And when the arresting agent said to me, “Jordan Belfort, you've been indicted on twenty-two counts of securities fraud, stock manipulation, money laundering, and obstruction of justice …” I had pretty much tuned out. After all, what was the point of hearing a list of the crimes I knew I'd committed? It would be like taking a sniff from a milk container labeled spoiled milk.

So I called my lawyer and resigned myself to spending the night in jail. And as they led me away in handcuffs, my only solace was getting to say one last good-bye to my loving second wife. She was standing in the doorway with tears in her eyes and wearing cutoff jean shorts. She looked gorgeous, even on the night of my arrest.

As they escorted me past her, I stiffened my upper lip and whispered, “Don't worry, sweetie. Everything will be okay,” to which she nodded sadly and whispered back, “I know, baby. Stay strong for me, and stay strong for the kids. We all love you.” She blew me a tender kiss and snuffled back a tear.

And then I was gone.

BOOK I

CHAPTER 1

THE AFTERMATH

September 4, 1998

oel Cohen, the disheveled assistant United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York, was a world-class bastard with a degenerate slouch. When I was arraigned the following day, he tried to convince the female magistrate to deny me bail on the grounds that I was a born liar, a compulsive cheater, a habitual whoremonger, a hopeless drug addict, a serial witness-tamperer, and, above all things, the greatest flight risk since Amelia Earhart.

It was a helluva mouthful, although the only things that bothered me were that he had called me a drug addict and a whoremonger. After all, I had been sober for almost eighteen months now, and I had sworn off hookers accordingly. Whatever the case, the magistrate set my bail at $10 million, and within twenty-four hours my wife and my attorney had made all the necessary arrangements for my release.

At this particular moment, I was walking down the courthouse steps into the loving arms of my wife. It was a sunny Friday afternoon, and she was waiting for me on the sidewalk, wearing a tiny yellow sundress and matching high-heeled sandals that made her look as fresh as a daisy. At this time of summer, in this part of Brooklyn, by four o'clock the sun was at just the right angle to bring every last drop of her into view: her shimmering blond hair, those brilliant blue eyes, her perfect cover-girl features, those surgically enhanced breasts, her glorious shanks and flanks, so succulent above the knee and so slender at the ankle. She was thirty years old now and absolutely gorgeous. The moment I reached her, I literally fell into her arms.

“You're a sightfor sore eyes,” I said, embracing her on the sidewalk. “I missed you so much, honey.”

“Get the fuck away from me!” she sputtered. “I want a divorce.”

I felt a second-wife alarm go off in my central nervous system. “What are you talking about, honey? You're being ridiculous!”

“You know exactlywhat I'm talking about!” And she recoiled from my embrace and started marching toward a blue Lincoln limousine parked at the edge of the curb of 225 Cadman Plaza, the main thoroughfare in the courthouse section of Brooklyn Heights. Waiting by the limo's rear door was Monsoir, our babbling Pakistani driver. He opened it on cue, and I watched her disappear into a sea of sumptuous black leather and burled walnut, taking her tiny yellow sundress and shimmering blond hair with her.

I wanted to follow, but I was too stunned. My feet seemed to be rooted into the earth, as if I were a tree. Beyond the limousine, on the other side of the street, I could see a dreary little park adorned with green-slat benches, undernourished trees, and a small field covered by a thin layer of dirt and crabgrass. The park looked as sumptuous as a graveyard. My misery made my eye hang on it for a moment.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Christ, I needed to grab hold of myself!I looked at my watch… didn't have one… I had taken it off before they slapped the cuffs on me. Suddenly I felt terribly conscious of my appearance. I looked down at my abdomen. I was one giant wrinkle, from my tan golf pants to my white silk polo shirt to my leather boating moccasins. I hadn't slept in how many days? Three? Four? Hard to say—I never slept much anyway. My blue eyes burned like hot coals. My mouth was dry as a bone. My breath was—wait a minute! Was it my breath? Maybe I scared her off! After three days of eating grade-D bratwurst I had the worst case of dragon breath since—didn't know when. But, still, how could she leave me now? What kind of woman was she? That bitch!Gold-digger—

These thoughts roaring through my head were completely crazy. My wife wasn't going anywhere. She was just shell-shocked. Besides, it was common knowledge that second wives didn't bail on their husbands the moment they got indicted; they waiteda bit so it wasn't so obvious! It couldn't be possible—

–just then I saw Monsoir smiling at me and nodding his head.

Fucking terrorist!I thought.

Monsoir had been working for us for almost six months now, and the jury was still out on him. He was one of those unnerving foreigners who wore a perpetual grin on his face. In Monsoir's case, I figured it was because his next stop was to a local bomb factory, to mix explosives. Either way, he was thin, balding, caramel-colored, medium height, and had a narrow skull shaped like a shoe box. When he spoke, he sounded like the Road Runner, his words coming out in tiny beeps and bops. And unlike my old driver, George, Monsoir couldn't shut up.

I walked to the limousine in a zombielike state, making a mental note to thrash him if he tried to make small talk. And my wife, well, I would just have to humor her. And if that didn't work, then I would start a fight with her. After all, ours was the sort of wildly rocky, dysfunctional romance where knock-down, drag-out brawls brought us closer together.

“How are you, boss?” asked Monsoir. “It is berry, berrygood to have you back. What was it like inside the—”

I cut him off with a raised palm: “Don't—fucking—speak, Monsoir. Not now. Not ever,” and I climbed into the back of the limousine and took a seat across from Nadine. She was sitting with her long, bare legs crossed, staring out the window into the rancid gullet of Brooklyn.

I smiled and said, “Taking in your old stomping ground, Duchess?”

No response. She just stared out the window, a gorgeous ice sculpture.

Christ—this was absurd! How could the Duchess of Bay Ridge turn her back on me in my hour of need? The Duchess of Bay Ridge was my wife's nickname, and depending on her mood it could cause her to either flash you a smile or tell you to go fuck yourself. The nickname had to do with her blond hair, British citizenship, over-the-top beauty, and Brooklyn upbringing. Her British citizenship, which she was very quick to remind you of, created a rather royaland refined mystique about her; the Brooklyn upbringing, in the gloomy groin of Bay Ridge, caused words like shit, prick, cocksucker,and motherfuckerto roll off her tongue like the finest poetry; and the extreme beauty allowed her to get away with it all. At five-seven, the Duchess and I were pretty much the same size, although she had the temper of Mount Vesuvius and the strength of a grizzly bear. Back in my younger and wilder days, she was pretty quick to take a swing at me or pour boiling water over my head, when the need arose. And, as odd as it seemed, I loved it.

I took a deep breath and said in a joking tone, “Come on, Duchess! I'm very upset right now and I need a bit of compassion. Please?”

Now she looked at me. Her blue eyes blazed away above her high cheekbones. “Don't fucking call me that,” she snarled, and then she looked back out the window, resuming her ice-sculpture pose.

“Jesus Christ!” I muttered. “What the hell has gotten into you?”

Still looking out the window, she said, “I can't be with you anymore. I'm not in love with you.” Then, twisting the knife in deeper: “I haven't been for a long time.”

Such despicable words! The audacity! Yet for some reason her words made me want her even more. “You're being ridiculous, Nae. Everything will be fine.” My throat was so dry I could barely get the words out. “We've got morethan enough money, so you can relax. Pleasedon't do this now.”

Still staring out the window: “It's too late.”

As the limousine headed toward the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, a combination of fear, love, desperation, and betrayal overtook me all at once. There was a sense of loss that I had never experienced before. I felt completely empty, utterly hollow. I couldn't just sit across from her like this—it was absolute torture! I needed to either kiss her or hug her or make love to her or strangle her to death.It was time for strategy number two: the knock-down, drag-out brawl.

With a healthy dose of venom, I said, “So let me get this fucking straight, Nadine: Nowyou want a divorce? Now that I'm under fucking indictment? Now that I'm under house arrest?” I pulled up the left leg of my pants, exposing an electronic monitoring bracelet on my ankle. It looked like a beeper. “What kind of fucking person are you? Tell me! Are you trying to set a world record for lack of compassion?”

She looked at me with dead eyes. “I'm a good woman, Jordan; everyoneknows that. But you mistreated me for years. I've been done with this marriage for a long time now—ever since you kicked me down the stairs. This has nothing to do with you going to jail.”

What a bunch of horseshit!Yes, I had raised a hand to her once– that terrible struggle on the stairs, eighteen months ago, that despicable moment, the day before I got sober—and if she had left me then,she would have been justified. But she didn't leave; she stayed;and I didget sober. It was only now—with financial ruin lingering in the air—that she wanted out. Unbelievable!

By now we were on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, approaching the Brooklyn-Queens border. Off to my left was the glittering island of Manhattan, where seven million people would dance and sing their weekend away, unconcerned with my plight. I found that wholly depressing. Off to my immediate left was the armpit of Williamsburg, a flat swath of land loaded with dilapidated warehouses, ramshackle apartments, and people who spoke Polish. Just why all those Poles had settled there, I hadn't the slightest idea.

Ahhh, a brainstorm! I would change the subject to the kids. This, after all, was the common bond we shared. “Are the kids okay?” I asked softly.

“They're fine,” she answered, in a rather cheery tone. Then: “They'll be fine no matter what.” She stared out the window again. The unspoken message was: “Even if you go to jail for a hundred years, Chandler and Carter will still be okay, because Mommy will find a new husband faster than you can say Sugar Daddy!”

I took a deep breath and decided to say no more; there was no winning with her right now. If only I had stuck with my first wife!Would Denise be saying now that she didn't love me anymore? Fucking second wives;they were a mixed bag, especially those of the trophy variety. For better or worse? Yeah, right! Theyonly said that for the sake of the wedding video. In reality, they were only there for the better.

This was payback for leaving my kind first wife, Denise, for the blond-headed scoundrel seated across from me. The Duchess had been my mistress once, an innocent fling that spiraled way out of control. Before I knew it, we were madly in love and couldn't live without each other, couldn't breathewithout each other. Of course, I had rationalized my actions at the time—telling myself that Wall Street was a very tough place for first wives, so it wasn't really my fault. After all, when a man became a true power broker, these things were expected to happen.

These things,however, cut both ways—because if the Master of the Universe took a financial nosedive, then the second wife would quickly move on to more-fertile pastures. In essence, the gold digger, aware that the gold mine had ceased to yield the precious ore, would move on to a more productivemine, where she could continue to extract ore, undisturbed. Indeed, it was one of life's most ruthless equations, and right now I was on the ass end of it.

With a sinking heart, I shifted my gaze back to the Duchess. She was still staring out the window—a beautiful, malevolent ice sculpture. At that moment I felt many things for her, but mostly I felt sad—sad for both of us, and even sadder for our children. Up until now they had lived a charmed life in Old Brookville, secure in the fact that things were just as they should be and that they would always stay that way. How very sad, I thought, how very fucking sad.

We spent the remainder of the limo ride in silence.

CHAPTER 2

THE INNOCENT VICTIMS

he village of Old Brookville stands on the sparkling “Gold Coast” of Long Island, an area so magnificent that up until a short time ago it had been strictly off-limits to Jews. Not literally, of course, but for all practical purposes we were still considered second-class citizens, a clique of slippery peddlers who'd risen above their station and needed to be observed and controlled lest they overrun the area's first-class citizens—namely, the WASPs.

Actually, these weren't just any old WASPs but a small subspecies of WASP known as “the blue blood.” Numbering only in the thousands, the blue bloods, with their tall, thin frames and fancy clothes, had natural habitats that included world-class golf courses, stately mansions, hunting and fishing lodges, and secret societies. Most of them were of British stock, and they took great pride in tracing their genealogies back to the time of the Mayflower.Yet, in evolutionary terms, they were no different from the massive dinosaurs that had ruled the Gold Coast 65 million years before them: They were on the verge of extinction—victims of increased death taxes, property taxes, and a steady dilution of the intellectual gene pool, as generations of inbreeding yielded idiot sons and daughters who wreaked financial havoc on the great fortunes their blue-blooded ancestors had taken generations to build. (The magic of Charles Darwin working overtime.)

In any event, this was where the Duchess and I now lived and where I had assumed we would grow old together. Now, however, as the limousine pulled through the limestone pillars at the edge of our six-acre estate, I wondered.

A long circular driveway, bordered by immaculately trimmed box hedges, led to our ten-thousand-square-foot stone mansion finished in French chateau style, with gleaming copper turrets and casement windows. At the end of the driveway, a long cobblestone walkway led to the mansion's twelve-foot-high mahogany front door. As the limo pulled up to it, I decided to take one last shot with the Duchess before we went inside. I got down on my knees and placed my hands on either side of her thighs, which were crossed. As always, her skin felt silky smooth, although I resisted the urge to run my hands down the full length of her bare legs. Instead, I looked up at her with puppy-dog eyes and said:

“Listen, Nae, I know this has been tough on you”—tough on you?—“and I'm really sorry for that, but we've been together for eightyears, sweetie. And we have two amazingkids! We'll get through this.” I paused for a moment and nodded my head for effect. “And even if I dogo to jail, you and the kids will always be taken care of. I promise you.”

“Don't worry about us,” she said coldly. “Just worry about yourself.”

I narrowed my eyes and said, “I don't get it, Nadine. You make it seem like you're totally shocked about all this. When we first met it wasn't like I was being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. I was being smeared and vilified by every newspaper in the free world!” I cocked my head to the side, at an angle that implied logic, and continued: “I mean, I guess it would be one thing if you married a doctor and then found out, after the fact, that he'd been defrauding Medicaid for the last twenty years. I guess thenyou wouldbe justified! But, now, given the circumstances—”

She cut me right off. “I had no idea what you were doing”– oh, I guess the two million in cash in my sock drawer never made you suspicious!—”none at all. And after they took you away, that Agent Coleman interrogated me for five hours—five fucking hours!”The last three words she screamed, and then she pushed my hands off her thighs. “He told me that Iwould go to jail too, unless I told him everything! You put me at risk; you put me in danger.I'll never forgive you for that.” She looked away, shaking her head in disgust.

Oh, shit!Agent Coleman had traumatized her. Of course, he had been totally full of shit, but, still, she was holding me responsible. Yet perhaps that boded well for our future together. After all, once the Duchess realized that she wasn't at risk, she might have a change of heart. I was about to explain that to her, when she turned back to me and said, “I need to get away for a while. The last few days have been stressful on me, and I need to be alone. I'm going to the beach house for the weekend. I'll be back on Monday.”

I opened my mouth, but no words came out, just a tiny gasp of air. Finally I said, “You're leaving me alone with the kids under house arrest?”

“Yes!” she said proudly, and she opened the rear door and popped out of her seat in a huff. And just like that she was gone-marching toward the mansion's massive front door, with the hem of her tiny yellow sundress rising and falling with each determined step. I stared at the Duchess's fabulous behind for a moment. Then I jumped out of the limousine and followed her into the house.

On the mansion's second floor, three large bedrooms were on the east end of a very long hallway, and a fourth bedroom, the master bedroom, was on the west end. Of the three east bedrooms, our children occupied two, and the third was used as a guest room. A four-foot-wide mahogany staircase swept up in a sumptuous curve from a grand marble entryway below. When I reached the top of the stairs, rather than following the Duchess into the master bedroom, I turned east and headed for the kids’ rooms. I found them both in Chandler's room, sitting on her glorious pink carpet. They were dressed in their pajamas, playing happily. The room was a little pink wonderland, with dozens of stuffed animals arranged just so. The drapes, the window treatments, and the goose-down comforter on Chandler's queen-size bed were all done in “Laura Ashley style,” a palette of mellow pastels and floral prints. It was the perfect little girl's room, for my perfect little girl.

Chandler had just turned five, and she was the spitting image of her mother, a tiny blond model. At this particular moment, she was engaged in her favorite pastime—arranging a hundred fifty Barbie dolls into a perfect circle around her, so she could sit in the center and hold court. Carter, who had just turned three, was lying on his stomach just outside the circle. He was thumbing through a picture book with his right hand, his left elbow resting on the carpet and his tiny chin resting in his palm. His enormous blue eyes blazed away behind eyelashes as lush as butterfly wings. His platinum-blond hair was as fine as corn silk and had tiny curls on the back that shimmered like polished glass.

The moment they saw me they jumped up and ran toward me. “Daddy's home!” screamed Chandler. Then Carter chimed in: “Daddy! Daddy!”

I crouched down and they ran into my arms.

“I missed you guys so much!” I said, showering them with kisses. “I think you got even biggerin the last three days! Let me look at you.” I held them out in front of me, and I cocked my head to the side and narrowed my eyes suspiciously, as if I were inspecting them.

They both stood tall and proud, shoulder to shoulder, their chins slightly elevated. Chandler was big for her age, Carter small, so she was a good head and a half taller than him. I compressed my lips and nodded my head gravely, as if to say, “My suspicions were confirmed!” Then I said accusingly: “I was right! You didget bigger! Why, you little sneaks!”

They both giggled deliciously. Then Chandler said, “Why are you crying, Daddy? Do you have a boo-boo?”

Without me even knowing it, a trickle of tears had made their way down my cheeks. I dried them with the back of my hand and then offered my daughter a harmless white lie: “No, I don't have a boo-boo, silly! I'm just sohappy to see you guys, it made me cry tears of joy.”

Carter nodded in agreement, although he was quickly losing interest. He was a boy, after all, so his attention span was limited. In fact, Carter lived for only five things: sleeping, eating, watching his Lion Kingvideo, climbing on the furniture, and the sight of the Duchess's long blond hair, which soothed him like a ten-milligram Valium. Carter was a man of few words, yet he was remarkably intelligent. By his first birthday he could work the TV, VHS, and remote control. By eighteen months he was a master locksmith, picking Tot Loks with the precision of a safecracker. And by two years old he had memorized two dozen picture books. He was calm, cool, and collected, entirely comfortable in his own skin.

Chandler, on the other hand, was the exact opposite. She was complex, curious, intuitive, introspective, and never at a loss for words. Her nickname was the CIA, because she was constantly eavesdropping on conversations, trying to gather intelligence. She had spoken her first word at seven months, and at the age of one, she was speaking full sentences. At two, she was having full-blown arguments with the Duchess, and she hadn't stopped since. She was difficult to cajole, impossible to manipulate, and had an unusually keen sense for seeing through bullshit.

And that created problems for me. My ankle bracelet could be explained away as some sort of advanced medical device, something that the doctor had given me to make sure my back pain never returned. I would tell Chandler that it was a six-month therapy regimen, and I was to keep the bracelet on at all times. She would probably buy that for a while. However, being under house arrest was going to be much more difficult to conceal.

As a family, we were constantly on the move—running and doing and going and seeing—so what would Chandler think about my sudden compulsion to not leave the house? I ran it through my mind and came to the quick conclusion that, in spite of everything, the Duchess could still be counted on to cover for me.

Then Chandler said, “Are you crying because you had to pay people back money?”

“Whuh?” I muttered. That dirty little Duchess! I thought. How could she! Whywould she? To try to poison Chandler against me! She was waging a psychological war, and this was her first salvo. Step one: Let the children know Daddy's a big fat crook; step two: Let the children know there are other, bettermen, who aren't big fat crooks, who will take care of Mommy; step three: The moment Daddy goes to jail, tell the children Daddy abandoned them because he doesn't love them; and, finally, step four: Tell the children that it would be appropriate to call Mommy's new husband Daddy, until hisgold mine dries up, at which point Mommy will find an even newer daddy for them.

I took a deep breath and conjured up another white lie. I said to Chandler, “I think you misunderstood, sweetie. I was busy working.”

“No,” argued Chandler, frustrated at my denseness. “Mommy said you took money from people and now you have to pay it back.”

I shook my head in disbelief and then took a moment to regard Carter. He seemed to be eyeing me suspiciously. Christ—did he know too? He was only three, and all he cared about was the fucking Lion King!

I had a lot of explaining to do, and not just today but also in the days and years to come. Chandler would be reading soon, and that would open up a whole new can of worms. What would I say to her? What would her friends say to her? I felt a fresh wave of despair wash over me. In a way, the Duchess was right. I had to pay for my crimes, although on Wall Street everyone was a criminal, wasn't that true? It was only a question of degree, wasn't it? So what made me worse than anybody else—the fact that I'd gotten caught?

I chose not to follow that train of thought. Changing the subject, I said, “Well, it's really not important, Channy. Let's play with your Barbie dolls.” And after you go to sleep, I thought, Daddy is going to head downstairs to his study and spend a few hours figuring out a way to kill Mommy without getting caught.