Текст книги "Catch the Wolf of Wall Street"

Автор книги: Jordan Belfort

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CHAPTER 3

EVAPORATING OPTIONS

e were somewhere on the Grand Central Parkway near the Queens-Manhattan border when I finally lost patience with Monsoir.

It was Tuesday morning, the day after Labor Day, and I was on my way to my criminal attorney's office in Midtown Manhattan with my electronic monitoring bracelet on my left ankle and this babbling Pakistani behind the wheel. Yet, despite those hindrances, I was still dressed for success, in a gray pinstripe suit, crisp white dress shirt, red shepherd's check necktie, black cotton dress socks—which, on my left ankle, concealed the electronic monitoring bracelet—and a pair of black Gucci loafers with tassels on them.

Dressing for success; that had seemed important this morning, although I was certain that even if I wore a diaper and a bow tie, my trusted criminal attorney, Gregory J. O'Connell, would still tell me that I looked like a million bucks. After all, this morning's first order of business would be to hand him a check in that very amount: one million bucks. That was a priority, he'd explained, because there was a better than fifty-fifty chance that the U.S. Attorney's Office would be making a motion to freeze my assets this week. And lawyers, of course, need to get paid.

It was a little after ten a.m., and the morning rush hour had just ended. Off to my right I could see the low-slung hangars and terminals of LaGuardia Airport, looking as grimy as usual. Off to my left I could see the burgeoning Greek paradise of Astoria, Queens, which had a higher concentration of Greeks per square foot than anyplace on earth, including Athens. I had grown up not far from here, in the Jew paradise of Bayside, Queens, a neighborhood of safe streets that was now in the process of being overrun by well-heeled Koreans.

We had left Old Brookville thirty minutes ago, and, since then, the closet terrorist hadn't kept his mouth shut. He'd been going on and on about the criminal justice system in his beloved Pakistan. On most days I would have simply told him to shut the fuck up. But on this particular morning I was too worn out to throttle him. And that was the Duchess's fault.

True to her word, the blond-headed scoundrel had flown the coop on me that weekend, spending three days and nights in the Hamptons. I was pretty sure she had crashed at our beach house at nighttime, but I hadn't the slightest idea what she had done during the day and, for that matter, whom she had done it with. She didn't call once, painting a clear picture that she was busy! busy! busy!prospecting for a new gold mine.

When she finally walked in the door, Monday afternoon, she said only a few words to me—something about the traffic being brutal on her way back from the Hamptons. Then she went upstairs to the kids’ rooms, smiling and laughing, and took them outside to the swings. She didn't seem to have a care in the world—making it a point, in fact, to amplify her cheeriness, ad nauseam.

She pushed them at an overly merry clip and then took her shoes off and went skipping around the backyard with them. It was as if our two lives no longer intertwined in any way whatsoever. Her very callousness had sent my spirits plunging to even lower depths. I felt as if I were in a dark hole, suffocating, with no escape.

I hadn't eaten, slept, laughed, or smiled in almost four days now, and, at this particular moment, with Monsoir's inane ramblings, I was contemplating slitting my own wrists.

Now he started speaking again. “I was only trying to cheer you up, boss. You are actually a berrylucky man. In my country they cut your hand off if they catch you stealing a loaf of bread.”

I cut him off. “Yeah, well, that's real fucking fascinating, Monsoir. Thanks for sharing.” And I took a moment to consider the pros and cons of Islamic justice. I came to the quick conclusion that, given my current circumstances, it would be a mixed bag for me. On the plus side, the Duchess wouldn't be acting so tough if I could force her to wear one of those head-to-toe burkas around town; it would stop that blond head of hers from sticking out like a fucking peacock. Yet, on the minus side, the Islamic penalty for white-collar crime and serial whoremongering had to be pretty severe. My kids and I had recently watched Aladdin,and they were ready to cut the poor kid's hand off for stealing a ten-cent grapefruit. Or was it a loaf of bread? Either way, Ihad stolen over a hundred million bucks, and I could only imagine what the Islamic penalty was for that.

Although, had I really stolenanything? I mean, this word stolenwas somewhat of a mischaracterization, wasn't it? On Wall Street we weren't actually thieves, were we? We simply talked people out of their money; we didn't actually steal itfrom them! There was a difference. The crimes we committed were softcrimes—like churning and burning, and trading on inside information, and garden-variety tax evasion. They were technicalviolations more than anything; it wasn't blatant thievery.

Or was it? Well, maybe it was… maybe it was. Perhaps I hadtaken things to a new level. Or at least the newspapers thought so.

By now the limousine was making its way over the great arc of the Triborough Bridge, and I could see the gleaming skyline of Manhattan off to my left. On clear days, like today, the buildings seemed to rise up to heaven. You could literally feel the weight of them. There was no doubt that Manhattan was the center of the financial universe, a place where movers and shakers could move and shake, where Masters of the Universe could congregate like Greek gods. And every last one of them was as crooked as me!

Yes, I thought, I was no different than any other man who owned a brokerage firm—from the blue-blooded WASP bastard who ran JPMorgan to the hapless white-bread schnook who ran Butt-Fuck Securities (in Butt-Fuck, Minnesota), we all cut a few corners. We had to,after all, if nothing more than to stay even with the competition. Such was the nature of contemporary perfection on Wall Street if you wanted to be a true power broker.

So, in reality, none of this was my fault. It was Joe Kennedy'sfault! Yes, he had started this terrible wave of stock manipulation and corporate chicanery. Back in the thirties, Old Joe had been the original Wolf of Wall Street, slashing and burning anyone in his path. In fact, he'd been one of the chief instigators of the Great Crash of ‘29, which plunged the United States into the Great Depression. He and a small handful of fabulously Wealthy Wolves had taken advantage of an unsuspecting public—making tens of millions of dollars short-selling stocks that were already on the verge of collapse, causing them to plummet that much lower.

And what had his punishment been? Well, unless I was a bit off on my history, he became the first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The audacity!Yes, the stock market's chief crook had become its chief watchdog. And all the while, even as he served as chairman, he continued to slash and burn from behind the scenes, making millions more.

I was no different from anybody else—no damn different!

“You're different than everybody else,” said Gregory J. O'Connell, my nearly seven-foot-tall criminal lawyer. “That's your problem.” He was sitting behind his fabulous mahogany desk, leaning back in his fabulous high-backed leather chair, and holding a copy of my not-so-fabulous indictment. He was a good-looking man, in his late thirties or early forties, with dark-brown hair and a very square jaw. He bore a striking resemblance to Tom Selleck from Magnum, P.I.,although he seemed much taller to me. In fact, leaning back the way he was, his head and torso seemed a mile long. (Actually, he was only six-four, although anyone over six-three seemed seven feet tall to me.)

Magnum plowed on: “Or at least that's how the government views you, as well as your friends in the press, who can't seem to get enough of you.” His voice was a deep tenor, his advice offered in the same theatrical way Enrico Caruso might offer it, if he were so inclined. “I hate to say it,” continued the towering tenor, “but you've become the poster child for small-stock fraud, Jordan. That's why the judge set your bail at ten million, to make an example of you.”

With a hiss: “Oh, really? Well it's all fucking bullshit, Greg! Every last drop of it!” I popped out of my black leather armchair, elevating myself to his eye level. “Everyone on Wall Street's a crook, youknow that!” I cocked my head to the side and narrowed my eyes suspiciously. “I mean, what kind of lawyer are you, anyway? I'm fucking innocent, for Chrissake! Completely fucking innocent!”

“I know you are,” said my friend and lawyer of four years. “And I'm Mother Teresa, on my way to Rome for a pilgrimage. And Nick over there”—he raised his chin toward the room's third occupant, his partner Nick De Feis, who was sitting in the black leather armchair next to mine—”is Mahatma Gandhi. Isn't that right, Nick?”

“It's Mohandas,” replied Nick, who had graduated at the top his class at Yale. He was about the same age as Greg and had an IQ^ around seven thousand. He had short dark hair, intense eyes, a calm demeanor, and a slender build. About my height, he was a greater wearer of blue pinstripe suits, heavily starched collars, and WASPy wingtip shoes, the sum of which made him look very intelligent. “Mahatma's not actually a name,” continued the Yale-man. “It's Sanskrit for great soul, in case you were wondering. Mohandas was—”

I cut him off with: “Who gives a fuck, Nick? I mean, sweet Jesus! I'm facing life in prison and you two bastards are jabbering away in Sanskrit!” I walked over to a floor-to-ceiling plate-glass window that shoved an awesome view of the concrete jungle of Manhattan down your throat. I stared out the window blankly, wondering how the fuck I ended up here—and knowing exactly how.

We were on the twenty-sixth floor of an art-deco-style office building that rose up sixty stories above Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. It was an area of Manhattan known as Bryant Park, although it used to be known as Needle Park, when two hundred heroin-addicted hookers, back in the seventies, had proudly called it home. But the park had long since been reclaimed and was now considered a fine place for working-class Manhattanites to enjoy a serene lunch, a place where they could sit on green-slat benches and breathe in the noxious fumes of a hundred thousand passing automobiles and listen to the blaring horns of twenty thousand immigrant cabbies. I looked down at the park, but all I could see was a swath of green grass and some ant-size people, none of whom, I figured, were wearing ankle bracelets. I found that very depressing.

Anyway, this particular building—namely, 500 Fifth Avenue-was an especially fine place to keep a law office. In fact, that was something that had instilled great confidence in me when I'd first met Nick and Greg four years ago, confirming a gut feeling I'd had that these two young lawyers were quickly on the rise.

You see, at the time, the law firm of De Feis O'Connell & Rose wasn't one of New York's marquis names. Rather, they were up-and-comers, two sharp young lawyers who'd made a name for themselves at the U.S. Attorney's Office (prosecuting crooks like me) and who'd only recently made the leap into private practice, where they could earn some realbucks (defending crooks like me).

The firm's third partner, Charlie Rose, had died tragically of a malignant brain tumor. But the gold-plated sign on the office's walnut front door still bore his name, and there were numerous pictures of him on the walls of the reception area, the conference room, and the walls of both Nick's and Greg's offices. It was a sentimental touch not lost on me. In my mind, the message was clear: Nick and Greg were extremely loyal guys, the very sort of guys to whom I could entrust my freedom.

“Why don't you take a seat?” said a soothing Magnum, extending his mile-long arm toward my armchair. “You need to calm down a bit, buddy.”

“I am calm,” I muttered. “I'm real fucking calm. What the hell do I have to be nervous about, anyway? The fact that I'm facing three hundred years?” I shrugged and took my seat. “That's not so bad in the general scheme of things, is it?”

“You're not facing three hundred years,” replied Magnum, in the tone a psychiatrist would normally use to coax a suicidal jumper off the edge of a bridge. “At worst, you're facing thirty years… or maybe thirty-five.” Then he paused, pursing his lips like an undertaker. “Althoughthere's an excellent chance the government's gonna try to supersede you.”

I recoiled in my seat. “Supersede me? What are you talking about?” Of course, I knew exactly what the fuck he was talking about. After all, I had been under criminal investigation for the better part of my adult life, so I was an expert in these matters. Still, I thought that somehow, if I made supersede mesound like an entirely outlandish concept, it would make it that much less likely to happen.

“Let me clarify things,” said the Yale-man. “Right now you're being charged with securities fraud and money laundering, but only on four stocks. Chances are they'll try to add on other charges—or supersede you,as the term goes. Don't be surprised if they try to indict you on the rest of the companies you took public. There were thirty-five in all, right?”

“More or less,” I said casually, entirely numb at this point to the sort of bad news that would make the average man pee in his pants. Besides, what was the difference between thirty years and thirty-five? They were both life sentences, weren't they? The Duchess would be long gone, and my children would be completely grown up—married, most likely, with children of their own.

And what would be myfate? Well, I would end up one of those toothless old men, the sort of worthless wino who embarrasses his children and grandchildren when he shows up at their doorstep on holidays. I would be like that old jailbird Mr. Gower, the druggist from It's a Wonderful Life.He had once been a well-respected man in his community, until he poisoned an innocent child after receiving a telegram that his son had died in World War I. Last time I'd watched the movie, Mr. Gower had just been sprayed in the face with a bottle of seltzer and then kicked out of a bar on his ass.

I took a deep breath. Christ—I had to rein in all these stray thoughts! Even in good times my mind had a habit of running away from me. I said, “So tell me what my options are here. I mean, the thought of doing thirty years in jail doesn't exactly thrill me.”

“Wellllllll,”said Magnum, “the way I see it—and feel free to chime in here, Nick—you have three options. The first is to fight this thing to the end, to go all the way to trial and win an acquittal.” He nodded his head once, letting the word acquittalhang in the air. “And if we dowin, then that'll be that. This will all be behind you, once and for all.”

“No double jeopardy,” I added, feeling both proud and disturbed at my expertise in criminal law.

“Exactly,” offered the Yale-man. “You can't be tried twice for the same crime. It'll be a case people talk about for years. Something that'll make Greg and I big wheels around town.”Then he paused and smiled sadly. “But I strongly advise you against that course. I think it would be a big mistake to take this thing to trial. And I say this as your friend, Jordan, not as your attorney.”

Now Magnum took over: “Understand, buddy, as a law firm we make much more money advising you to go to trial—probably ten times as much in a case like this. A trial as complicated as this would drag on forever—more than a year, probably—and the cost would be astronomical: ten million plus.”

Now the Yale-man chimed in: “But if we dogo to trial and you end up losing, it's going to be a total disaster. A disaster of biblical proportions. You'll get thirty years plus, Jordan, and—”

Magnum, overlapping: “—and you won't do your time in a federal prison camp, playing golf and tennis. You'll be in a federal penitentiary, with murderers and rapists.” He shook his head gravely. “It'll be hell on earth.”

I nodded in understanding, keenly aware how the feds housed their criminals. It was according to time: the more time you faced, the higher your security risk. Anything under ten years, with no violence in your background, and you qualified for a minimum-security prison. (Club Fed, so to speak.) But if your sentence was greater than ten years, they locked you in a place where a jar of Vaseline was more valuable than a truckload of weapons-grade plutonium.

Greg plowed on: “Now, as your friend, I would be veryupset knowing you were locked in a place like that, especially when there were other options open to you—better options, I would say.”

And Magnum kept right on talking, but I tuned out. I was already aware that going to trial wasn't an option. I knew that contrary to what most people thought, the sentences meted out for financial crimes were far worse than those for violent crimes. It was all in the amount: If investor losses exceeded a million dollars, the sentences were severe. And if investor losses topped a hundred million—as in my case—sentences were off the charts.

And there was more, starting with the fact was that I was guilty as sin. It was something Nick knew, Greg knew, and I knew too. For their part, Nick and Greg had represented me since the beginning– since the summer of 1994, when I'd made the fatal mistake of smuggling millions of dollars to Switzerland.

I had been under intense regulatory pressure at the time, starting with the SEC, which had become obsessed with my brokerage firm, Stratton Oakmont. I had started the place back in the fall of 1988, quickly discovering a wildly lucrative niche in the securities markets selling five-dollar stocks to the richest one percent of Americans. And just like that,Stratton became one of the largest brokerage firms in America.

In retrospect, things could have turned out much differently. Just as easily, I could have gone down the path of the straight and narrow—building a brokerage firm to rival Lehman Brothers or Merrill Lynch. As fate would have it, one of my first mentors, a true genius named Al Abrams, had a rather aggressive take on what constituted a violation of the federal securities laws. And Al was a careful man, the sort of man who kept ten-year-old pens in his drawer so when he backdated documents the ink would hold up to an FBI gas chromatograph. Al spent the better part of his day anticipating the moves of nosy securities regulators and covering his tracks accordingly.

And he was the one who'd taught me.

So, like Al, I had been careful too, covering my tracks with the zest and zeal of a sniper deep behind enemy lines. From the earliest days of Stratton, I was well aware that every trade I made, and every deal I consummated, and every word I spoke on the telephone would one day come under the microscope of a securities regulator. So, whether my actions were legitimate or not, they had damn well better appear to be that way.

In consequence, I had driven the SEC up the wall after they sued me in the fall of 1991, expecting an easy victory. They even went as far as setting up shop in my own conference room to try to intimidate me. Alas, things did not go as they planned: I ended up bugging my own conference room and setting the thermostat at alternating extremes—freezing them out in winter and burning them out in summer. Then I hired their ex-boss, a man named Ike Sorkin, to protect me, defend me, and undermine their investigation at every juncture. Meanwhile, between 1991 and 1994, I was making $50 million a year, as each of these young investigators (all of whom were making $30,000 a year) resigned in frustration and disgrace, and with terrible cases of frostbite or dehydration, depending on the season.

Eventually, I settled my case with the SEC. “Peace with honor,” my lawyer had called it, although, to me, it was a total victory. I agreed to pay a $3 million fine and then walk off quietly into the sunset. The only problem was that I just couldn't bring myself to leave. I had become intoxicated with wealth and power, hooked on an entire generation of young Long Islanders calling me king and the Wolf. The buzzword of the day was instant gratification, and the ends justifying the means was the instrument of its assurance. And just like that,Stratton spiraled out of control. And I along with it.

By the early nineties, the Wolf of Wall Street was bearing his fangs. He was my devilish alter ego, a persona far removed from the child my parents had sent out into the world. My sense of right and wrong had all but vanished, my line of morality having moved toward the dark side in a series of tiny, almost imperceptible steps, which together landed me firmly on the wrong side of the law.

The Wolf was a despicable character; he cheated on his wife, slept with hookers, spent obscene amounts of money, and viewed securities laws as nothing more than shallow obstacles to be hurdled in a single bound. He justified his actions using absurd rationalizations, as he buried Jordan Belfort's guilt and remorse beneath obscene quantities of dangerous recreational drugs.

And all the while the government kept coming. Next it was NASDAQ, refusing to list any company in which the Wolf was the largest shareholder. The Wolf's solution—as insane as it now seems—was to smuggle millions of dollars to Switzerland, using their legendary bank-secrecy laws to try to turn himself into the invisible man. Through a series of shell corporations, numbered accounts, and expertly forged documents, the plan seemed perfect.

But from the very start it also seemed to be jinxed. The problems began when my chief money courier was arrested in the United States with half a million in cash, and the problems ended (in disaster) when my Swiss banker was arrested a few years later, also in the United States, at which point he began cooperating against my money courier.

Meanwhile, a young FBI agent named Gregory Coleman had become obsessed with the Wolf, vowing to take him down. In what would turn into a game of cat and mouse that became legendary within the FBI, Coleman followed my paper trail halfway around the world and then back again. And, finally, after five years of dogged legwork, he had connected enough dots to secure an indictment.

So here I was, six days post-arraignment, a victim of my own recklessness and Coleman's persistence. And there was Magnum, moving onto option two, which was a plea bargain. “… And while I can't promise you an exact sentence, I don't think it'll be more than seven years, or maybe eight at the most.” He shrugged. “Let's use eight to be conservative.”

“No fucking way!” I snapped. “Let's use sevenand be optimistic, for Chrissake! They're myyears—not yourfucking years—so if I want to use seven of them, that's my fucking prerogative!”

The Yale-man said, “Okay, seven years is a fair number to work with. It's eighty-four months, before deductions, and—”

I cut off the Yale-man: “Ah, good, let's talk about my deductions! And feel free to exaggerate if you like. I promise I won't sue for malpractice.”

They both smiled dutifully, and then the Yale-man continued: “The first deduction is for good time.You get fifteen percent for each year served. So, that's fifteen percent off eighty-four months—” He looked up at Magnum. “You got a calculator?”

“Forget the calculator,” sputtered I, the math whiz. “It's seventy-one and a half months. But let's call it seventy-one, just to be fair. What's next?”

The Yale-man went on: “Well, you get six months in a halfway house, which is almostlike being home. That brings you down to sixty-five months.”

Now Magnum chimed in: “And then there's the drug-treatment program, which”—he let out a chuckle—”given your past history you'd definitely qualify for.” He looked over at Nick. “He could probably teachthe course, Nick, right?”

“One would think,” replied the Yale-man, with a starchy shrug. “You'd make an excellent teacher, Jordan. I'm sure you'd make the class very interesting. Anyway, you get twelve months off for the drug program; so now you're down to fifty-three months.”

Magnum said, “You see what I'm saying here, Jordan? It's not nearly as bad as you thought, right?”

“Yeah, one would think,” and I took a moment to consider my fate. Four and a half years—well, it was certainly better than going to trial and risking becoming Mr. Gower. I would serve my time in Club Fed, playing tennis and golf, and be released around my fortieth birthday. I would have to pay a hefty fine, of course, but I still had enough money squirreled away to emerge from jail a wealthy man.

And then all at once it hit me: I might even be able to sell this package to the Duchess!Perhaps she would stay if she knew I was facing only four and a half years… although I could reduce that a bit, tell her that I was facing only four years. How would she know I was lying? Maybe I should say forty-eight months. Which sounded shorter? Probably forty-eight months, or maybe I would say forty-seven months and then follow it up with “That's less than four short years, baby!”

Wow, what a pleasant ring that had to it! Less than four short years, baby!It would be no more than a hiccup, something that could happen to any man of power. Yes, I would explain that to the Duchess, and she would understand. After all, I had been a terrific provider over the years. So why should she waste her time searching for a new gold mine when the gold mine she already had would be back in operation in less than four short years, baby!

“… could always cooperate,” said Magnum, raising his eyebrows two times in rapid succession. “Now if you go down thatroad, you might not even spend a day in jail; you could get straight probation. Although you'd probably have to do a year or so.”

I had been too busy fantasizing about the backstabbing Duchess, so I'd missed the first half of what Magnum said. Apparently he had now moved on to option three: cooperating, also known as ratting. Call it what you will, I chose to ignore the latter part of Magnum's sentence prediction, and I said, with a trace of hope in my voice: “I won't have to do even a day in jail?”

Magnum shrugged. “I said it's a possibility. Not a guarantee. Once you become a cooperating witness, the sentencing guidelines are thrown out the window. The judge could do whatever he wants. He could give you probation, he could give you a year, or, theoretically, he could throw the book at you. Now, in your case, you have Judge Gleeson, who's the perfect judge for this sort of thing. He understands the importance of cooperation, so he'll be fair with you.”

I nodded slowly, sensing daylight. “So he's pro-defense?”

“No,” replied Magnum, bursting my bubble. “He's not pro-defense, and he's not pro-government. He's straight down the middle. He pretty much dances to his own tune. He's one of the smartest judges in the Eastern District, so no one's gonna pull the wool over his eyes, not you orthe U.S. attorney. But that's a positive, because if you do the right thing, John will be fair with you. That much I can promise.

“By the way, don't call him John in the courtroom, unless you want to be held in contempt.” He smiled and winked. “Just call him Your Honor, and you'll be fine.”

Now the Yale-man chimed in: “Greg knows John as well as anybody. They used to work together at the U.S. Attorney's Office. They're friends.”

Wait a second. Did he just say friends? My lawyer is friends with the judge!It was music to my ears.

It all made sense now. I had always known that Magnum was the perfect lawyer for me. I'd even looked past the fact that standing next to him made me feel like a shrimp. And in the end, look how well things had worked out! By sheer coincidence, my lawyer was friends with the judge, which meant he would wink at the judge ever so subtlyjust as the judge was about to announce my sentence, at which point the judge would nod back at Magnum just as subtlyand then say, “Jordan Belfort, in spite of the fact that you stole a hundred million bucks and corrupted an entire generation of young Americans, I'm sentencing you to twelve months’ probation and a one-hundred-dollar fine.”

Meanwhile, the Duchess would be sitting in the courtroom-dressed to the nines and counting her lucky stars that she had decided to abandon her search for a new gold mine. After all, the Wolf's gold mine was about to reopen for ore extraction, simply because his lawyer was friends with the judge!

I smiled warmly at Magnum and said, “Well, this is some pretty good news, Greg.” I shook my head slowly, breathing a sigh of relief. “Why didn't you say you were friends with the judge in the first place? It's a terrific development. Reallyterrific, if you catch my drift!” I winked at Magnum conspiratorially and rubbed my thumb and first two fingers together, as if to say, “Just tell me how much cash you need to pay off the judge!” Then I winked again.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” exclaimed Magnum, in a tone deep enough to wake the dead. “John is not like that! He's completely legitimate. He's the kind of judge who might end up on the Supreme Court one day. Or at least the Court of Appeals. Either way, he won't do anything improper.”

Fucking killjoy! I thought. My own lawyer won't go to bat for me. Instead, he's trying to take the wind out of my sails. I resisted the urge to tell him to go fuck himself, and I said, “Well, I wouldn't want to do anything to jeopardize anyone's career aspirations. Anyway, I don't think I'd make a very good cooperating witness, so it's a moot point.”

Magnum seemed taken aback. “Why do you say that?”

“Yeah!” added a stunned Yale-man. “I couldn't disagree with you more. You'd make an excellent cooperating witness. Why would you think otherwise?”

I let out a deep sigh. “For a lot of reasons, Nick, not the least of which is that I'm at the very top of the food chain. Anybody I cooperate against will be a lesser figure than me. Not to mention the fact that most of the people the government would be interested in are my best friends. So, tell me, how the fuck am I supposed to rat out my best friends and maintain even one ounce of self-respect? I wouldn't be able to walk around Long Island with my head up. I'd be a leper.” I paused, shaking my head in despair. “And if I decide to cooperate, I have to come clean about all my crimes, tell them everything, right?”