Текст книги "Catch the Wolf of Wall Street"

Автор книги: Jordan Belfort

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CHAPTER 10

HOW TO CONFRONT A DUCHESS

tep one: Light a raging fire.

The master bedroom's French limestone fireplace was four by six feet wide and had been retrofitted with an electric-starter mechanism. As always, four thick logs of premium-grade ponderosa pine, split lengthwise, sat atop a prodigious heap of white-cedar kindling wood. By this time of September, the fireplace hadn't seen a flame in nearly five months. Fine. Good. At precisely 9:15 p.m. I pushed the stainless button on the wall, igniting the first—but not the last—raging inferno of the evening.

Step two: Burn a piece of overpriced furniture.

Grunting and groaning, I pulled over one of my formerly aspiring decorator's favorite procurements—a $13,000 white silk ottoman that had taken some thieving bastards in High Point, North Carolina, nearly a year to manufacture—to within three feet of the flames. I sat down and stared into the flames. In less than a minute, the kindling wood was crackling away menacingly and the flames were blazing away ominously. Not satisfied, I rose into a crouch, reached behind me, pulled the ottoman closer, and sat back down. Much better. In ten minutes the ottoman and I would be toast.

Step three: Ignite the flames of righteous indignation.

A simple task. Was there a jury that would convict me if I stabbed the Duchess through her ice-cold heart, using that 18-karat-gold letter opener, which was resting comfortably on her $26,000 white lacquer secretary? I would only need to worry about a jury of her peers, which would consist of twelve blond-headed gold diggers who saw no crime in a married woman– with two children, no less!—knocking on her ex-boyfriend's door at midnight, while her husband was lying home in bed (under house arrest), contemplating suicide, and dreaming of ways to win her back. I held on to that thought and took some deep, angry breaths. I kept staring into the belly of the flames, letting the fire bake my skin-growing angrier, more righteous, more indignant, with each passing second.

Just then I heard the familiar sounds of the arriving Duchess, the gravel crunching in the driveway, the slamming of the massive mahogany front door, the clickity clack clackof her overpriced high heels ascending the sumptuous stairs. And then, finally, the door opened. I turned from the flames and there she was, dressed in black. That was appropriate, I thought, considering she had just arrived at her own funeral.

When she saw me sitting so close to the flames, she stopped dead in her tracks and struck a pose, with her head cocked to one side and her hands on her hips and her shoulders thrown back and her back slightly arched, pushing her glorious breasts forward. She opened her mouth to say something, but no words came out. Then she began chewing on the inside of her cheek.

There were a few moments of silence as we just stared at each other, like two gunfighters waiting to throw down. The Duchess looked good, of course. There was no denying that, even now. The light from the fire set off her entire ensemble: that tiny black dress, those sexy black high heels, those long bare legs, her great mane of shimmering blond hair, those brilliant blue eyes, her high cheekbones, those glistening lips, that perfectly smooth jawline.

Yes, the Duchess was, indeed, a woman of parts, although at this particular moment the only part of her I was interested in was a tiny area just over her left breast implant, right between her second and third ribs. That was where her ice-cold heart was located, and it would be there where I would plunge the golden letter opener. Then I would jerk the letter opener upward and slightly to the left, with a twisting motion—slicing her pulmonary artery, which would cause her to drown in her blood. It would be a ghastly, horrific, painful death, the sort of death a gold-digging Duchess deserved.

“Why the fire?” she asked, giving up her pose and heading toward her white lacquer secretary. “It's a bit early in the season, don't you think?” She flashed me a dead smile as she sat on the edge of the secretary, placing her palms on it and locking her elbows. Then she crossed her legs and wriggled her butt, as if to get comfortable.

I stared back into the flames. “I was cold,” I said, because you sucked every last drop of blood and life force out of me, you conniving, gold-digging cunt,“so I figured I'd light a fire,” before I slice you to ribbons and rid the earth of you.

A few moments of silence, then she cocked her head to the side. “Where are the kids?” she asked.

I kept staring into the flames. “At Gwynne's,” I answered tonelessly. “They're sleeping there tonight,” so I can murder you without upsetting them.

Now confusion mixed with trepidation: “Why are they, uh, sleeping at Gwynne's?”

Still staring into the flames: “Because I wanted the house to myself,” without bystanders, witnesses, distractions, or any soul who might try to talk me out of doing what I know I must do to free myself of you,“that's why.”

She chuckled nervously, trying to make light of what she now realized was going to be a very dark encounter. “Yourself?” she answered. “Well, what about me? I'm here too, right?”

I looked up, and she was holding the golden letter opener in her right hand, tap-tap-tappingthe blade on her left palm. How had she known? Was it that obvious that I was planning to stab her? Or was it just coincidence? No matter. I had once seen Arnold Schwarzenegger stab an Islamic terrorist with the terrorist's own knife, and it had looked rather elementary.

Just then I noticed the Duchess was still wearing her wedding band. What a fucking joke! The philandering Duchess and her wedding band! “You're still wearing your wedding band, I see. Don't you think that's a bit ironic, Nadine?”

She put down the letter opener and extended her left hand in front of her, staring at it quizzically. After a few moments, she looked up and shrugged. “Why?” she said innocently. “We're still married, no?”

I nodded slowly. “Yeah,” I said, “I think we are. So what did you do last night?”

A quick answer: “I went to see Earth, Wind and Fire. With my friends.” The last three words screamed: Alibi!

I compressed my lips and nodded. “Oh, your friends,” I said understandingly. “Which friends are those?”

Another quick answer: “Donna and Ophelia.”

Donna Schlesinger– why, that lousy cunt!She definitely had a hand in this, no doubt about it! She and the Duchess had been friends since high school, and, back in the day, she'd dated one of Michael Burrico's closest friends.

“How was the concert?” I asked casually.

The Duchess shrugged. “It was okay. Nothing special.” Then a strategic subject change: “I was hoping the kids would be home tonight.”

Why? So you could use them as human shields? Sorry, Duchess, no such luck. It's only you and me tonight—you, me, and the golden letter opener. Prepare to reap the consequences of your infidelity!I said, “Just out of curiosity, where'd you sleep last night?”

“At Ophelia's,” she snapped. “Why?”

“You went straight from the concert to Ophelia's?” I asked skeptically. “You didn't stop anywhere along the way, not to eat or anything else?”

She shook her head. “No, I went straight to Ophelia's. No stops.”

There were a few moments of silence, during which I found myself desperately wanting to believe her. Just why, I still couldn't explain, although it had something to do with the bizarre nature of the male animal—his vanity, his foolish pride, his desire not be spurned by a beautiful woman. Yes, in spite of everything, my masculine pride was still trying to convince me that my wife was faithful and that this was all some giant misunderstanding.

I took a deep breath and stared into the belly of the fire, relighting the flames of anger, hatred, and righteous indignation. “So how's Michael Burrico?” I asked, and then I looked up from the fire and stared into her eyes.

The Duchess recoiled. “Michael Burrico?” she said incredulously. “How on earth would I know?” She stared at me with a blank expression, and still I wanted to believe her. I really did.

But she was a lying sack of shit; I knew it! “When's the last time you've seen him, Nadine? Tell me! How long ago? Days? Weeks? Hours? Tell me, God damn it!”

The Duchess sagged. “I have no idea what you're talking about.” She looked away. “Someone's giving you bad information.”

“You're a fucking liar!” I sputtered. “A total fucking liar!”

She kept looking down, saying nothing.

“Look at me!” I screamed, rising from the ottoman. She looked. I plowed on: “Look me in the eye and tell me you weren't at Michael Burrico's apartment last night. Go ahead and tell me!”

She shook her head quickly. “I… I wasn't. I wasn't there.” Her tone was just short of panic. “I don't know what you're talking about. Why are you doing this?”

I took an aggressive step toward her. “Swear on the kids’ eyes that you weren't there last night.” I clenched my fists. “Go ahead and swear to me, Nadine.”

“You're fucking sick,” she muttered, looking away again. “You're having me followed.” Then she looked back at me. “I want you out of this house. I want a divorce.” She raised her chin in defiance.

I took another step forward. I was less than three feet from her now. “You… fucking… cunt!” I sputtered. “You no-good, lousy, philandering, gold-digging cunt! I didn't have you followed! Michael Burrico's fiancée called here. That's how I knew where you were, you… lousy—”

She cut me off. “Fuck you!” she screamed. “You're calling mea cheat! How many women have you fucked, you fucking hypocrite!” With that she popped off the edge of the desk and took a step toward me, closing the distance. We were less than two feet apart now. “I want you out of my life!“ she screamed frantically. “I want you out of my house!I don't ever wanna speak to you again!”

“Your house?” I sputtered. “Are you fucking kidding me? This is myhouse! I'm not going fucking anywhere.”

“I'm hiring a lawyer!” she screamed.

“Yeah, the best my money can buy!” I screamed back.

She clenched her fists. “Fuck you! You're a fucking crook! You stole all your money! I hope you die in jail!” The Duchess took an aggressive step forward, as if she were about to take a swing at me, and then suddenly she did something that I would never forget for the rest of my life. With complete serenity, she dropped her arms to her sides and relaxed her posture and tilted her head back all the way, exposing the most vulnerable part of her long bare neck, and she said, “Go ahead: Kill me.” Her voice was soft and mellow, completely resigned. “I know that's what you want, so just go ahead and do it.” She tilted her head back even farther. “Kill me right now. I won't fight back. I promise. Just strangle me and put us both out of our misery. You can kill yourself afterward.”

I took a step toward her, ready to commit murder, when suddenly my eyes lit on a picture frame affixed to the wall. It was just over the Duchess's left shoulder. The frame was long and narrow, perhaps one by three feet, and inside were three large pictures of our children. Chandler was on top, and she was smiling bashfully. She had on a fancy yellow T-shirt with a buttercup collar and a matching yellow headband. She was three and a half at the time, and she looked like a tiny Duchess. Beneath her was Carter, only eighteen months at the time, and he had on nothing but a snow-white diaper. His eyes were wide open, his expression full of wonder, as he stared at a bubble floating in the air. His blond hair shimmered like polished glass. His regal eyelashes were as lush as butterfly wings. And, again, all I saw was the Duchess. And beneath Carter was a picture of him and his sister. He was sitting in her lap, she had her arms around him, and they were staring into each other's eyes adoringly.

In that very instant the true irony of my plight hit me, like one of Zeus's thunderbolts. It wasn't enough that I couldn't kill my wife because she was the mother of my children; it was much worse than that. The simple fact was that becauseshe was the mother of my children I would never be rid of her. She would be in my life forever! Haunting me until the day I died! I would be seeing her at every birthday, graduation, wedding, confirmation, and bar mitzvah. Christ, I would even have to dance with her at my children's weddings!

I would see her in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, and for better or worse, until death did us part. In essence, I would always be married to her, linked together by the intense love we shared for our two children.

And there she was, standing there, waiting to be choked to death.

“I'll never forgive you for this,” I said softly. “With my dying breath, I'll never forgive you.” I headed for the door, walking slowly.

Just as I reached the door, I heard her say in a soft, gentle tone, “I'll never forgive you either. Not with my dying breath.”

Then I left the room.

BOOK II

CHAPTER 11

THE MAKING OF A WOLF

ell, I'm sorry to hear that,” said the Bastard sympathetically, and he leaned forward in his cheap black armchair and rested his bony elbows on the conference table. “It's always a shame when kids are involved.”

“Yeah,” I said sadly—and, yeah, right!I thought. This is what you live for, Bastard! You relishstripping a man of all his worldly possessions! What else could make a feeble life like yours worth living? “It's sad for all of us, Joel, but I doappreciate your concern.”

He nodded dutifully. OCD, however, was shaking his head suspiciously. “I don't know,” he said. “I really thought you two would stay together; I really did.”

“Yeah,” I replied glumly, “so did I. But there's just too much water under the bridge. Too many bad memories.”

It was a little after ten, and I was singing on Court Street again, albeit to a slightly smaller audience. The Witch, the Mormon, and my towering attorney, Magnum, were all conspicuously absent. The Witch, I was told, was busy with another case today, no doubt destroying some other poor schnook's life; the Mormon was busy attending to personal matters—probably still in bed with one of his Mormon wives, trying to conceive a fresh litter of Mormon babies; Magnum, on the other hand, was busy doing nothing. In fact, the only reason he wasn't here this morning—in the heinous subbasement of 26 Federal Plaza—was that he thought it would be good if I spent some “alone time” with my captors. And while his words seemed somewhat logical, they also seemed suspiciously convenient, considering I had just written him a check for a million dollars last week. (Why show up anymore when he could take the money and run?)

So it was just the three of us this morning: the Bastard, OCD, and myself.

“You're being quiet this morning,” said OCD. “If you don't want to talk about your personal life, it's okay.”

I shrugged. “What's there to say, other than that my wife must have been sleep-talking during our wedding vows?”

“You think maybe she's having an affair?”

“No, Greg! Not a chance,” I said confidently. Of course she is!I thought. She's fucking that dimwitted Brooklynite Michael Burrico. A dunce like him was an easy target for a prospecting Duchess. “She's definitely not cheating. What's going on with us cuts much deeper than that.”

He smiled warmly. “Don't take offense; I'm just trying to make sense of it all. Usually, when this sort of thing happens, there's another man waiting in the wings. But, hey, what do I know, right?”

Now the Bastard chimed in: “Like Greg, I'm alsosympathetic to your plight, but the only thing you should be worried about now is your cooperation. Everything else is secondary.”

Yeah? What about my kids, asshole?

“Joel's right,” said OCD. “It's probably not a good time to be getting divorced. Maybe you and Nadine should wait a bit, until all the commotion dies down.”

“All right,” snapped the Bastard, “so let's get down to cases, then. Last time we spoke, the market had just crashed and you were out of a job. What happened next?”

What an asshole! I thought. I took a deep breath and said, “Well, I wouldn't actually say I was out of a job, because what I had at LF Rothschild wasn't really a job in the first place. I was a connector, which is the lowest of the low on Wall Street. All I did was dial the phone all day and try to get past the secretaries of wealthy business owners. It was a pride-swallowing siege—but one that I had no choice but to grin and bear. The only thing keeping me going was hope for the future.” I paused for effect. “And then came the crash.

“I still remember what it was like coming home that night on the express bus: You could've heard a pin drop. There was a certain fearin the air that I'd never experienced before. The media was sensationalizing things to the point of hysteria, predicting bank failures, massive unemployment, people jumping out of windows. It was the start of another Great Depression, they said.”

“A depression that never came,” added the Bastard, straight-A student of obvious history.

“Exactly,” I said. “It never came, although no one had any way of knowing that back then. Remember, the lasttime the market had crashed was in ‘29, and the depression came right on the heels of that. So it wasn't all that far-fetched to think it would happen again.” I paused for a moment. “Now, for people who'd actually grown upin the Great Depression—like my parents—the prospect was utterly terrifying, but for people like me, who'd only read about it in history books, it was simply unimaginable. So, whether you worked on Wall Street or Main Street that day, everyone was scared shitless what would happen next.” I shrugged my shoulders. “Everyone except Denise; she was as cool as a cucumber!”

“That's pretty impressive,” reasoned OCD, “considering how broke you two were.”

“Yeah,” I said quickly, “and it would have even been moreimpressive if she had the slightest idea the market had crashed.” I smiled ruefully.

The Bastard narrowed his eyes. “She hadn't heard it on the news?”

I shook my head slowly. “Denise never watched the news. She was more of a soap-opera girl than a news girl.” I paused for a moment, and a profound wave of sadness overtook me. Denise might have had her shortcomings, but she was still a great wife. And she was gorgeous, one of those dark-haired Italian beauties who every teenage boy fantasizes about in high school. She was a great wearer of black leather miniskirts and white cotton sweaters, the latter of which were softer than a baby's bottom.

Thinking back now, the way the two of us had cocooned ourselves in our tiny Bayside apartment had been pure magic. We had sworn eternal love for each other, certain that our love could conquer all. Yet, somehow, we'd managed to destroy that love. We allowed success and money to go to our heads. We allowed it to separate us, to eat away at us. Ultimately, it would turn herinto a world-class shopaholic and meinto a rip-roaring drug addict. And then came the Duchess—

“—still with us?” snapped the Bastard. “You need to take a break for a few minutes?” He offered me his sadistic warden's smile.

“No, I'm fine,” I said. “Anyway, Denise had no idea the market crashed, so the moment I walked through the door she threw her arms around me, as if I were a conquering hero. ‘Oh, my God!’ she said. ‘You're finally home! How was your first day as a stockbroker? Did you break the company record for the most stock sold?’”

OCD and the Bastard started chuckling.

I chuckled back. “Yeah—it was pretty funny, all right, except by mid-November we were down on our hands and knees, rolling up nickels, dimes, and quarters to pay for shampoo. But it wasn't until a month after the crash that I decided to throw in the towel and leave Wall Street.

“It was a Sunday morning, and Denise and I were sitting in the living room, like two zombies, looking through the help-wanted section. After a few minutes, I came across something that struck me as odd. ‘Check this out,’ I said to her. ‘There's a company advertising for stockbrokers, and they're not on Wall Street; they're on Long Island.’

“She looked at the ad and said, ‘What does PT, FTmean?’

“‘Part time, full time,’ I answered, and I found myself wondering what kind of brokerage firm hired part-time stockbrokers? I'd never heard of that before. Still, given my circumstances it seemed like a reasonable idea. So I said to her, ‘Working part-time might not be such a bad thing. Maybe I could earn a few bucks while I'm looking for something else,’ to which she nodded in agreement.

“Anyway, neither of us thought much of it at the time, and when I called the next morning, I was completely turned off. A gruff male voice answered the phone and said, ‘Investors’ Center. How can I helpya?’ and I knew right on the spot that it wasn't a switchboard operator. And the company's name sent shivers down my spine. I was used to names like Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch, names that resonated with Wall Street.

“I could only imagine myself saying, ‘Hi, this is Jordan Belfort, calling from the Investors’ Center in Butt-Fuck, Long Island. I'm no closer to Wall Street than you are, so why don't you send me your hard-earned money? You'll probably never see it again!’”

“Very prophetic,” snapped the Bastard.

“Yeah,” I agreed, “although the Investors’ Center wasn't in Butt-Fuck, Long Island; it was in Great Neck, Long Island, which is actually a pretty nice part of town. The company was on the second floor of a three-story office building.” I paused for a moment. “You know, I remember pulling up to the building and feeling rather impressed. I was driving Denise's old piece-a-shit Datsun, which was the only car we had at the time, and I was saying to myself, ‘Hey, this place doesn't look so bad!’ But then the moment I stepped into the boardroom my jaw dropped.

“The space was much smaller than I'd anticipated. It was maybe twenty feet square, and there wasn't a single thing about it that resonated of Wall Street. There were no computer monitors, no sales assistants, no stockbrokers pacing back and forth. There was nothing but twenty old wooden desks—all of them weathered-looking and arranged haphazardly. Only five of the desks had brokers behind them, and there was no pump whatsoever, just a low-level murmur.

“I'd worn a suit and tie to my interview, and I was the only one in the boardroom dressed that way. Everyone else was wearing jeans and sneakers, with the exception of one guy. The only problem was that his suit looked like it came straight out of a Salvation Army box. To this day, in fact, the guy still sticks out in my mind, because of his dim-witted expression. He looked lobotomized. He was in his early thirties, and he had the greasiest black hair imaginable—as if he showered in motor oil and—”

The Bastard began nodding his head again, as if to say, “Move on.”

“Well, whatever,” I said. “The manager was sitting in a small office at the front of the boardroom, and he seemed oblivious to everything. He was yapping away on his phone, talking to his wife, I recall, and saying something about their dog being sick. When he saw me, he held up an index finger, to which I nodded dutifully. Then he kept on talking.

“His name, as it turned out, was George Grunfeld, and two years prior he'd been a social-studies teacher. He was in his mid-to-late forties, and he happened to be the spitting image of Gabe Kaplan, the teacher from Welcome Back, Kotter.”I smiled at OCD. “Remember Welcome Back, Kotter,Greg?”

OCD nodded. “Yeah, with Travolta.” He looked at the Bastard. “You ever watch Welcome Back, Kotter?“

The Bastard flashed OCD a dead smile. “Yeah; up your nose with a rubber hose,” he said tonelessly.

“Ah, there you go!” I said warmly. “That's exactly what Travolta used to say to Mr. Kotter.” I smiled at my new friend, pleased that I was finally able to find some common ground with him. Alas, he refused to smile back. Instead, he stared at me, stone-faced.

I shrugged. “Well, anyway, he looked just like him, bushy everywhere—his hair, eyebrows, mustache, knuckles. It looked like someone had glued a bunch of tumbleweeds to the guy!”

OCD shook his head, amused, while the Bastard stared ominously.

“Anyway, George finally hung up the phone and came over to greet me. ‘Just pick a free desk and start dialing,’ he said after a few seconds of small talk.

“ ‘That's it?’ I said. ‘You're hiring me?’

“ ‘Yeah, why not? It's not like I'll be paying you a salary or anything. That's not a problem, is it?’ I was about to tell him that it wasn't, when one of the salesmen suddenly popped out of his chair and started pacing back and forth. George motioned toward the guy and said, ‘That's Chris Knight; he's our top salesman. He's got a helluva rap. Listen…’

“I nodded and focused my attention on Chris, who was tall and lanky and had a face longer than a thoroughbred's. He was no older than twenty, and he was dressed like he'd just strolled in from a keg party. I remember being appalled at how terrible he sounded. He was mumbling, slurring; I could hardly understand the guy! Then, out of nowhere, he started screaming into his telephone, in short rapid-fire bursts of ludicrous sales hype. ‘Jesus Christ—Bill—I guaranteeit!’ he screamed. ‘I guarantee this stock is going up! You can't lose here—it's impossible! I have information-it's not even public yet—do you hear me? I don't think you do, because I have inside information!’ And then he yanked the phone away from his ear and held it out in front of his own nose and stared at the receiver with contempt. Then, after five seconds of staring, he put the phone back to his ear and started screaming again. I looked at George and said, ‘What the hell was that all about?’ and George nodded his head knowingly and said, ‘He's pretty good, isn't he?’ And I just shook my head in disbelief and said nothing. Meanwhile, Chris was still screaming, ‘Don't you understand? We can't lose here, Bill! I promise you! The stock is going to the moon! No ifs, ands, or buts! You gotta buy it now-right now!’”

I shrugged and said, “During my six months at LF Rothschild, I never heard anything so ridiculous, and I'm not just talking about all the securities laws he was violating but also his complete lack of professionalism. All this screaming and shouting and ridiculous sales hype was so Mickey Mouse-ish that no one with even the slightest bitof financial sophistication would give this guy the time of day.”

The Bastard held up his hand. “Let me get this straight,” he said skeptically. “You're saying you're nota proponent of sales hype?”

I turned the corners of my mouth down and shook my head. “No, I'm not, actually. Selling through hype is a complete waste of time. In military terms, it's like carpet bombing. It's very loud and menacing, but it's only marginally effective. At Stratton, I taught a different style of selling, which was the equivalent of dropping laser-guided smart bombs on high-priority targets.” I shrugged. “Let me take things in order and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about.”

The Bastard nodded slowly.

“All right,” I said. “So as awful a salesman as Chris Knight was– or, should I say, as untrained a salesman as he was—it was what came out of his mouth next that truly shocked me. ‘Oh—come on!’ he screamed at his client. ‘The stock's only thirty cents a share. Pick up a thousand shares, that's all I'm asking! It's only a three-hundred-dollar investment; how could you go wrong?’

“With that, I turned to George and said, ‘Did he just say thirty cents a share?’ And George said, ‘Yeah. Why?’

“ ‘Well, it's just that I've never heard of stocks that cheap.I was trained at a Big Board firm—meaning we sold mostly New York Stock Exchange stocks. And even then,the stuff we did on NAS-DAQ was in the fifteen-to-twenty-dollar range.’

“Meanwhile, Chris was busy slamming down his phone in anger. Then he started muttering: ‘That motherfucker hung up on me! What a rat bastard!’ So George looks at me and says, ‘No worries, he'll get the next one. But either way, you should sit next to him for a few days, so he can show you the ropes.’

“Well, I was about to break out into outright laughter, but then George added, ‘He didmake over ten grand last month. How much did you make?’

“I looked at George in disbelief, wondering how a moron like Chris Knight could make ten thousand dollars in a month; then something very odd occurred to me. ‘Wait a second,’ I said to him. ‘How the hell did he make ten thousand dollars working on three-hundred-dollar trades?’ Then I explained to George how a three-hundred-dollar trade at LF Rothschild would yield a commission of between three and six dollars—depending on how aggressive you wanted to get with the client. And sometimes the commissions were even lower than that, I added, especially on tickets of a half million or more.

“So George waved me into his office to offer me a visual explanation. He grabbed a sheet of paper off his desk and said, ‘These are the only stocks you'll be recommending here. There are six of them.’ He handed me the sheet of paper, and I took a moment to study it. ‘KBF Pollution Control?’ I muttered to myself. ‘Arncliffe National?’ I was about to say, ‘I've never heard of any of these stocks,’ when George pointed to a column of numbers and said, ‘These are the bids for the stocks,’ and I saw that they were all under a dollar. I was about to say, ‘These must be real pieces of shit if they're all under a dollar,’ when he pointed to another column of numbers and said, ‘And these are the offers. Everything in between is your commission.’”

I paused for a moment to let my words sink in. Then I smiled and said, “You might find this hard to believe, given my current level of sophistication, but back then I didn't understand the difference between the bid and the offer. I mean, I knew you sold at the bid and bought at the offer, but I'd never really considered what happened to the money in between.

“You see, with big stocks the difference between the two is small, maybe half a percent, and only occasionallydo the brokers get a sliver of it; usually it's glommed up by traders. In fact, at Rothschild, the brokers would go absolutely wild when a block of stock came with a spread in it. They would call their clients and bang them over the head, because they were making double commission.