Текст книги "Catch the Wolf of Wall Street"

Автор книги: Jordan Belfort

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Текущая страница: 25 (всего у книги 33 страниц)

CHAPTER 22

STAYING THE COURSE

nd we made love.

Not that night, but the very next day.

And it was beautiful; in fact, not only was it beautiful but, thanks to some very savvy biochemists at the Pfizer drug company, I performed like a world-class stud.

Indeed, just before I picked up KGB at the Creature's Sag Harbor cottage, I swallowed fifty milligrams of Viagra on an empty stomach. In consequence, by the time we pulled into my driveway that afternoon, I had an erection that the DEA could have used to break down a crack-house door.

It's not like I was impotent or anything (I swear!), but, nonetheless, it had seemed like a prudent move. After all, to consume a blue bomber, as a Viagra was affectionately known (due to its purplish color and bombastic effect), was the equivalent of taking out a biochemical insurance policy against the most dreaded of all male complexes: performance anxiety.

I had been a biochemical stud, not just that afternoon but into that evening as well. What Pfizer doesn't advertise on the label (and what every man who's taken one knows) is that blue bombers have a way of lingering in your system for a while. So, eight hours later, while your erection might no longer be suitable as a battering ram, it's still stiff enough to hang a few pieces of dry-cleaning on.

Somewhere around the fourteenth hour, the last blue-bomber molecules have been metabolized to the point of worthlessness, turning you back into a mortal man again. It was for that very reason that, precisely fourteen hours later, I took another blue bomber, and then fourteen hours after that I took yet another.

KGB, I figured, could handle it. Yet, sometime late Wednesday afternoon, even shebegan to complain. She was limping toward my master bathroom, dressed in her Soviet birthday suit, which consisted of a commie-red ribbon in her hair and nothing else, and she was muttering, “Bleaha muha! Your thing don't go down! There is something wrong here! It crazy! It crazy,” and she slammed the bathroom door behind her, muttering a few more Russian expletives.

Meanwhile, I was lying in bed, faceup, dressed in my American birthday suit, which consisted of a federally issued electronic monitoring bracelet and a Viagra-induced erection that was stiffer than steel, and I was fairly beaming. After all, it's not every day that a five-foot-seven-inch Jew-boy from Queens gets to send the first, last, and only Miss Soviet Union limping to the bathroom with her loins on fire! And while there was no denying that the boys at Pfizer had a hand in that, it was very much besides the point.

The point was that I was falling in love again.

In fact, later that afternoon, when KGB told me that she had to head back to her apartment in Manhattan, I felt my heart sink. And when she called me a few hours later, saying that she missed me, my spirits soared. And then when she called again, two hours after that, just to say hello, I immediately called Monsoir and told him to pick her up at her apartment and bring her back to the Hamptons.

So it was that she arrived later that night, carrying a very large suitcase, which I gladly helped her unpack. And just like that we became inseparable. Over the next few days we did everything together: ate, drank, slept, shopped, played tennis, worked out, rode bikes, Rollerbladed, went Jet-Skiing—we even showered together!

And, of course, at every opportunity, we made love.

Each night we built a fire on the beach and made love on a white cotton blanket, beneath the stars. And, of course, with each upward thrust, I would sneak a peak toward the dunes, checking for the dreaded Igor, who, according to her, was merely her brother-in-law who had come to the States to keep an eye on her. And while her explanation had seemed a bit thin, I decided not to press the issue.

When the weekend arrived, no partyers appeared. The Creature had seen to that—spreading the word that 1496 Meadow Lane was closed for business. The following Monday morning, I dropped KGB off at her Midtown apartment to pack up more of her belongings, and then I headed down to 26 Federal Plaza to meet with the Bastard and OCD. Not surprisingly, I was back in the Bastard's good graces again, so the meeting went quickly.

The topic was the upcoming Gaito sting, and we came to a quick decision that I would try to set one last meeting with the Chef before James Loo came into town. The goal was simple: to get James Loo to accept cash. I would tell the Chef that I wanted James Loo to know that I was serious—and to know that James Loo was serious too. I would provide Loo with a small cash deposit, as a token of good faith: $50,000, I would suggest, which he could use to get things going.

At first I was skeptical of the plan, thinking that the Chef would smell a rat. But, on second thought, I knew he wouldn't. For some inexplicable reason, something had clicked off in his mind, something related to the irrational joy he got from getting around the law.

He was a complicated man, an otherwise law-abiding citizen who would never dream of breaking “the law” as heconsidered it– which is to say, all laws not having to do with securities trading, the movement of money, and its subsequent reporting to the IRS. If you were to ask the Chef for advice on how to rob a bank or how to kite checks, he would either report you to the authorities himself or, more likely, lose your number forever.

This, however, was different. We were talking about money that, in hismind, we had stolen fair and square—no violence had been committed, no guns were placed to people's heads, the victims were nameless and faceless, and, most important, if we hadn't done it ourselves, someone else would have done it just the same. In consequence, we were justified to hide our dirty money from those who meant to find it.

So, in retrospect, it didn't come as much of a shock to me when the Chef and I met two days later in my office, and he thought my idea of bringing “a token of good faith” to our meeting was a fabulous one.

He went about explaining his money-laundering scheme in the most intimate detail—even mentioning the names of James Loo's overseas relatives who would be assisting us in Asia. Then he named the banks and the shell corporations we would be using– finishing with the airtight cover story we would stick to if Coleman and his boys were to ever catch wind of this.

It was an inspired plan, which involved the purchase of real estate in half a dozen Far East countries and the maintenance of a full-time staff overseas, to operate a series of legitimate businesses-clothing manufacturers in Vietnam and Cambodia, and electronics manufacturers in Thailand and Indonesia, where labor was cheap and workmanship was prideful.

Yes, the plan was brilliant, all right, but it was also wildly complicated. In fact, it was so complicated that I found myself wondering if a jury would ever be able to understand it. So I grabbed a legal pad off the brass-and-glass coffee table, ripped off a sheet of paper, picked up a pen, and began drawing a diagram.

With my voice lowered conspiratorially, I said, “So let me get this straight: I'm gonna give James Loo fifty thousand dollars”—I drew a little box with James Loo's name inside it, as well as the amount: $50,000—“and then James will have one of his people smuggle the money overseas to his sister-in-law, Sheila Wong, ^*in Singapore”—I drew another box on the otherside of the pad, with Sheila's name inside it, and then drew a long straight line connecting the two boxes—”and then Sheila is gonna use that money to fund accounts in Hong Kong and the Chanel Islands and Gurnsey…” and before I was even finished talking about Sheila's role in our scheme, the Chef had grabbed the pen from me and begun drawing a diagram that fairly resembled the blueprints to a nuclear submarine. And as he narrated his plan, with a mixture of pride and relish, the Nagra rolled on, recording each of his words.

When the Chef was done, he said, “Now this is a fucking Picasso—although you better throw it in the garbage!”

I crumpled the note into a tiny ball and did just that. “Better safe than sorry,” I said casually. We exchanged a Mafia-style hug, a firm handshake, and then confirmed our plans to meet James Loo on Monday. I suggested the Hotel Plaza Athénée in Manhattan, where, by sheer coincidence, I explained, I would be staying for a few days with my new girlfriend. But it was no coincidence, of course. Long before Loo and the Chef arrived there, OCD and his tech team would have the room wired for sight and sound.

When I met OCD afterward, I joked that I was up to my old tricks again—passing notes and such—although I had saved this particular note for posterity.

With that I handed him a sealed envelope with the tape and the crumpled note inside. “You better go stop at Macy's and pick up a steam iron,” I said jokingly. “You're gonna need it.” Then I climbed into my Mercedes and headed back out to the Hamptons.

But, alas, over the next days I began feeling guilty again.

In fact, by that Sunday evening, the thought of ratting out the Chef had become wholly depressing. Apparently, falling in love with KGB had softened the sting of recent events—those terrible betrayals that had ignited flames of revenge in the glare of which I had come to view friends as enemies and enemies as friends. Now, however, I wasn't so sure again.

It was a little before nine, and KGB and I were enjoying our nightly ritual—sitting on a white cotton blanket, near the water's edge, with a small fire blazing away, struggling against the first chills of autumn. Just over the horizon, an orange full moon hung heavy in the night sky, with the dark waters of the Atlantic just beneath it.

“It looks close enough to touch, doesn't it, sweetie?”

“Da,”she replied cutely. “It look like Swiss cheese.”

“Looks,”I said, correcting her. “It lookslike Swiss cheese.”

“What you mean?” she asked.

I grabbed her hand and squeezed it lovingly. “I mean, you have a habit of leaving the soff words, especially verbs. Like you just said, ‘It looklike Swiss cheese,’ when you should have said, ‘It lookslike Swiss cheese.’ It's no big deal, really; it's just a matter of singular or plural. You see, when you say it,it relates to one thing, so you would say looks,but if you were talking about they,which is plural, you would say, ‘Theylook like Swiss cheese.’ Again, it's really no big deal, but it just kind of sounds funny. It's sort of hard on the ears.” I shrugged my shoulders, trying to make light of it.

She let go of my hand. “What do you mean: hard on ears?”

“Theears,” I said calmly, although a bit of frustration had slipped out around the edges, “and that's a perfect example of what I mean.” I took a deep breath and said, “You never say the word the, Yulia —ever!And it's probably the most commonly used word in the English language! It gives a certain rhythm to things, a certain flow, and when you don't say it—like when you just said ‘hard on ears’ or when you say, ‘I want to go to store,’ it just sounds funny. I mean, it sounds like you're uneducated or something, which I know you're not.” I shrugged again, not wanting to make a big deal of it, although I couldn't help myself. We were spending all our time together, and her bastardization of the English language was starting to get to me. Besides, I was in love with her, so I felt it was my obligation to teach her—or to trainher, so to speak—and lead her gently down the road to a little village called Assimilation.

“Anyway,” I continued, “if you really want to improve your English, I would start with those two things: using the word theand knowing when to add an sto the end of a verb.” I smiled and grabbed her hand. “From there, all good things will follow.” I winked at her. “And if you want, I could even be your teacher! Every time you make a mistake I can correct– ow!What are you —owww!Stop—that hurts! Owww! Owww! Owwwwwwwwwwwwww!”I screamed. “Let go of my fingers! You're gonna break them! Stop!”

“You little puta!” she muttered, as she bent my fingers backward in a KGB finger lock. “You and your stupid English language—ha! America think they own world! Bleaha muha! Capitalist pigs!”

Thinksit owns theworld, I thought, as I screamed, “Let! Go! Of! My! Fingers! Please!You're gonna break them!”

She let go, then turned her back to me and began muttering, “Stupido Americano… This ridiculous!”

“Jesus Christ,” I muttered. “What the hell is wrong with you?” I began shaking my fingers in the air, trying to stop the pain. “You could have broken my fingers with that fucking KGB death grip!” I shook my head angrily. “And who the hell are youto call mea little puta? Do you think I'm a little whore now? Five minutes ago you were saying how much you loved me, and now you're calling me names!” I shook my head sadly, as if I were very disappointed in her. Then I prepared for makeup sex.

After a few seconds she turned to me, ready to make friends again. “Praste minya,”she said softly, which I could only assume meant thank you,and then she started babbling something in rapid-fire Russian. Her tone was rather sweet, actually, so I could only assume she was saying that she had tried to break my fingers out of love. Then she said, “Come here, musek-pusek;let my kiss your palcheke,”and she grabbed my fingers and began kissing them very softly, which led me to believe that palchekewere fingers.

Feeling vindicated, I leaned back on the blanket and prepared for my reward (meaning, she would kiss my erect penis), and just like that she was lying next to me and we were kissing. It was a soft, mellow kiss, a slow kiss, a Russkiekiss, which seemed to last for a very long time. Then she rested her head upon my shoulder, and the two of us, lovers once more, stared up to the heavens, beholding the awesome expanse of the universe—the orange moon, the glittering stars, the fuzzy white band of the Milky Way.

“I'm sorry about before,” I said, lying through my teeth. “I won't correct you anymore if you don't want me to. I mean, I don't care if the moon lookslike Swiss cheese or looklike Swiss cheese, as long as I'm looking at it with you.” With that, I kissed her on the crown of her pretty blond head and drew her close to me.

She responded by putting her long, bare leg over mine and cuddling even closer to me, as if we were trying to become one person.

“Ya lublu tibea,”she said softly.

“I love you too,” I said just as softly. I took a deep breath and stared up at the moon, wondering if I'd ever been happier than I was right now. This girl was truly something special– Miss Soviet Union, for Chrissake!—the very catch of the century, and, most importantly, she was the perfect antidote to the backstabbing Duchess.

With a fair dose of nostalgia in my voice, I said, “You know, I remember looking up at the moon as a kid and being totally blown away by it. I mean, knowing that people had actually been up there and walked on it. In 1969 you were only a year old, so you were too young to remember that day, but I remember it like it was yesterday.

“My parents had this little black-and-white TV set in the kitchen, and we were all crowding around it, watching Neil Armstrong go down the ladder. And when he took his first steps on the moon and started bouncing around…” I shook my head in awe. “I wanted to be an astronaut that day.” I let out a few embarrassed chuckles. “Boyhood dreams,” I said, smiling. “Which somehow led me to Wall Street. I would have never imagined it that day.”

KGB chuckled back, although her chuckles had an edge to them. “This is big American joke,” she said confidently. “You knows this, right?”

“What—that every kid wants to be an astronaut?”

“Nyet,”she replied quickly. “I talk about moon”—the moon, for Chrissake! What's so fucking difficult about it?“There is English word for this moon thing you do. It is, uh, how do you say… falcefekaceja… ah!Hoax! You make hoax!”

“We make ahoax. Are you trying to say the moon landing was a hoax?”

“Da!”she exclaimed happily, and she popped upright and stared down at me. “This is hoax against Soviet people! Everybody know this.”

“Knows,”I replied through clenched teeth. “Everybody knowsthis, Yulia, and you're not actually gonna look at me with a straight face and say that you think the United States faked the moon landings to embarrass Mother Russia! Please don't tell me this!” I stared at her, incredulous.

She compressed her lips and shook her head slowly. “This landing you speak of is filmed in movie studio. Everyone in rest of world know this. Only herepeople believe. How do you think America fly to moon when Soviet Union can't? We had female in space while you were flying monkey! And suddenly you beat us to moon? Oh, please—this is hoax! Look at pictures. You see flag wave on moon, but there is no atmosphere. So how can flag wave? And day is night, when night must be day; and earth rise, when it must fall. And there is belt of radiation…” and on and on KGB went, explaining how the moon landing was nothing more than a giant hoax filmed in a Hollywood movie studio, with the sole purpose of embarrassing her beloved Soviet Union. “We will talk about this with Igor when you meet,” continued KGB, “and then you will see truth. Igor is famous scientist. He tame fire.”

I shook my head in disbelief, not knowing quite how to respond to that. “Well,” I said, fighting back the urge to tell her that her former Soviet Union, including its defunct space program, had become nothing more than a joke, “every human being is entitled to their opinion, although I willtell you that to pull off a conspiracy like that you'd need a thousand people, with every last one of them keeping the same monumental secret, and in thiscountry, I can assure you, if more than two people know something, it doesn't stay secret very long. And I don't want to even mention the fact that there were actually threemoon landings, not just one. So let's just say, for argument's sake, that the government actually hadfaked the first moon landing and had been lucky enough to get away with it—why would they press their luck again? It would be like: ‘Hey, gotcha once, Mr. Brezhnev! Now I want you to watch very closely as I do it again, and see if you can catch me this time!’ But, hey, what do I know? I mean, maybe aliens did land in Roswell, and maybe you wereright yesterday when you said America never actually fought in World War Two”—that was KGB's other pearl of wisdom, shared with me by the tennis court after I beat her six-love, six-love in eleven and a half minutes, at which point we play-wrestled on the grass, an activity that ended with me screaming, “Let me go! Stop! You're hurting me! You're hurting me!”—”and that America stole the plans to the first atomic bomb from Russia and not the other way around.” This had tumbled from her commie-red lips as we watched a History Channel documentary discussing weapons of war. KGB had informed me that Russian people—which is to say, Soviet people—were responsible for virtually every meaningful invention, from the atomic bomb to the X-ray machine to fine literature to Bazooka chewing gum. “The truth is, Yulia—and I say this out of love, as in ya lublu tibea—what I'm really interested in is Igor's cure for fire. Now, tell me what that'sall about, because that'swhat I find most fascinating!”

She looked at me for a moment, shaking her head wryly. “Wouldn't youlike to knows!”

“Yeah,” I shot back, “I would like to knows!So why don't you tellsme!”

She stared at me with narrowed eyes. Then she motioned with her heart-shaped chin over to our perfect little beach fire, at the base of which rested a Duraflame. “You see flame?”

I nodded. “Yeah, what about theflames?”

KBG snapped her long, slender fingers, and the air went pop!“Just like this,” she said proudly, “Igor can make flame go away.”

“And how does he do that?” I asked skeptically.

“He control atmosphere,” she answered nonchalantly, as if controlling the atmosphere were no more difficult than adjusting a thermostat.

I looked at her for a moment, astonished, and also trying to calculate how much money I could have made with some wacky Russian scientist willing to claim he controlled the atmosphere. It was just the sort of thing the Strattonites would have eaten up. I could have stood Igor before the boardroom dressed in a wizard's costume, like Professor Dumbledore from Harry Potter,and I would have said into the microphone: “Behold Professor Igor and his cure for fire….” The Strattonites would have gone wild-clapping and cheering and then lighting Lake Success on fire, so Igor could show his stuff.

I said to KGB: “Ohhh, I get it now! I think I've actually seen this in the movies. It was in Austin Powers:Dr. Evil had figured out a way to control the weather, and he was looking to hold the world hostage. On second thought, maybe that was James Bond. Or was it Superman?” I shrugged. “I'm not really sure.”

She shrugged back. “Laughs all you want, big shot, but I not joking. Igor can cure fire, and I am shareholder in company. One day he will…” and as KGB kept talking, I stopped listening. I think she actually believed what she was saying, and not just all this nonsense about Professor Igor but everything. She had grown up with a different set of history books, listening to Soviet TV, where wewere the Evil Empire determined to rule the world. I snuck a peek at my watch: It was nine-thirty. I had to be at the Plaza Athénée by nine a.m. tomorrow morning, which meant I had to leave the Hamptons at six-thirty.

It was time to end this night, which I couldn't do until I had made love to KGB in front of the fire. It was our ritual, after all, something that both of us looked forward to each day. So now I would have to agree with her. Yes, I would say: In spite of my earlier skepticism, I am now convinced that Igor's cure for fire shall change the world. Now, be a good girlfriend, KGB, and make love to me. I don't care that you're a closet communist. I love you anyway!

And that was exactly what happened.

The next morning, at precisely eleven a.m., the Chef and James Loo walked into Room 1104 at the Hotel Plaza Athénée. It was a one-bedroom, two-bathroom suite, and the Chef and James Loo were likes two lambs walking into a slaughterhouse.

I greeted them at the front door, first hugging the Chef and then exchanging a hearty handshake with James Loo, who was short, thin, slightly balding, and wearing an expensive sharkskin suit with no necktie.

I led him and the Chef into the main salon, directly off the entry gallery. The bedroom was on the opposite side of the suite, and the door was closed nice and tight—and for good reason. Inside that bedroom, wearing headphones, revolvers, and some very serious expressions, were four FBI agents—namely, OCD, the Mormon, and two tech guys, both of whom were in their mid-thirties and looked liked they should be working at Circuit City, fixing computers.

We had spent the last two hours analyzing the living room-checking various camera angles and such and places to hide the bugs. It was a small space, perhaps fourteen by twenty feet. Three tall windows that looked out over 64th Street admitted a great deal of light– toomuch light, actually, according to the tech guys, so we closed the bordello-red curtains to reduce the glare.

I offered my guests seats on the couch, and then I took a seat in one of the armchairs. That was just fine with the boys in the bedroom. At this very moment, they were watching us on a twelve-inch closed-circuit TV screen that received images from a pinhole camera concealed inside a digital clock. The clock was resting on one of the side tables, placed there by the tech guys. Ironically, I wasn't wired today; only the room was, pursuant to a court order. The only thing I was concealing was a very fat envelope with $50,000 inside. It was in the left-inside breast pocket of my navy sport jacket, and I was to hand it to Loo at the appropriate moment.

After a few minutes of small talk, I said, “I want you to know, James, that Dennis has vouched for you a hundred percent. And that means more than anything to me.”

James nodded dutifully. “Likewise,” he said. “Dennis vouched for you too, so I am very comfortable.”

“And that's very good,” said the Chef, who had little capacity for ass-kissing. “And now that we got dat ouddadaway, let's move on to the good stuff!”

“Absolutely,” I agreed. “The sooner I get my cash overseas the better. And by the way, James, I want you to know that the fact that you've done a lot of business with Bob makes me that much more comfortable.” I nodded respectfully. “It's like getting an endorsement from the Pope, you know?” Actually, more like Darth Vader, I thought.

James nodded. “Yes, we have very good history together. And it is also a very funny story how we met.”

“Oh, really?” I said. “I'd like to hear it.”

“Well,” he said proudly, “I was what you call ‘emergency CEO’ in one of Bob's underwritings.”

“Yeah—get a load of this,” snapped the Chef. “Bob does a deal, makes ten million, but then the CEO kicks the bucket the day the thing goes public. So now we needed someone—or, should I say, anyone—tostep in.” The Chef looked at his Chinese friend. “No offense, James.”

“None taken,” he replied.

“Anyway,” continued the Chef, “James was on the board of the company at the time, so he agreed to step in as CEO. Then, of course, he did the right thing afterward, which is why we're all sitting here today.”

I nodded slowly, searching for a way to delve deeper into how James had “done the right thing afterward,” which in Chef terms (and in Wolf terms) meant that James had continued to issue cheap shares of stock to the Blue-eyed Devil after he went public. “So how did the company end up doing?” I asked casually. “Did it go anywhere?”

“It struggled for a while,” said James, “but we all did okay.”

The Chef said, “The most important thing is that James can be trusted. The company had its ups and downs, but James was always solid as a rock. And that's how he'll be with you on this: solid as a rock.”

Sensing an opening, I asked, “So you've helped Bob the same way you're gonna help me? You know, like”—I winked—”over there, in the Orient?”

James shrugged. “I do many things for Bob, but I do not like to discuss them. It will be the same way with you. What we do is only between us, and, of course, Dennis.”

I needed to get off this topic quickly, so I smiled at James, as if I'd only been testing him to see if he were a blabbermouth. “That's exactly what I wanted to hear, James. Exactly!See, the most important thing to me is that no one outside this room ever finds out about this. That's crucial.”

“They won't,” James said confidently. “Remember, it will be just as bad for me if that happens.”

“And that is indeed true,” added the Chef, with a single nod. “So all that's gotta happen now is you and James gotta come to your agreement; then I'll do what Igotta do, and you'll do what yougotta do, and then James will do whatever he'sgotta do, and badabeep, badabop, badaboop—schwiiiitttt!—the money'll be over there,and we'll still be over here,and we can all sleep at night like babies.”

“We're all on the same page here,” I said confidently, “and if it's okay with you, James, I'd like to move very quickly. I have two million in cash that I want to get out of the States ASAP, because I, uh”—I looked around the room suspiciously, then lowered my voice—”got the money from new-issue kickbacks. You know, from clients I gave units to, who then did the right thing afterward and gave me back cash.” I slowly raised my voice to normal. “Anyway, then I got another ten million dollars already in Switzerland, which I'd like to wire to your sister as soon as we get all the accounts set up.”

“It is no problem,” said James. “She is very organized and very reliable.”

The Chef said, “I can take care of all the paperwork over there or anything else you need to get done. And when it comes to making investments, I'll work as an adviser to keep you one step removed until your problems blow over.”

I nodded in understanding, wondering if there was any point to sitting in this room one second longer. Both the Chef and James Loo had already buried themselves a thousand times over, plus I had the Chef on audiotape from the other day, with his diagram of the nuclear submarine.

Still, according to OCD, there was nothing more powerful with a jury than videotape, so, if possible, I should try to get the Chef to explain the entire money-laundering scheme yet again. Obviously, with the way things were going, I knew he would; it was just that I was so bored with the whole thing by this point that I couldn't bear to hear it myself again. I had already been an expert on money laundering before all this started, and I was sick and tired of playing dumb.

Nevertheless, I had a job to do; so I took a deep breath and said, “Everything sounds great, but I'm still a little bit confused. Just so there's no crossed wires in the future, can we go through the whole thing one more time?”

The Chef shook his head quickly, as if I were a bit on the dense side. Then he said, “Yeah, of course. Grab that pen and paper over there, will you…” and that was it. Ten minutes later I had another nuclear submarine, this one even moredetailed. After all, the first one had only been a prototype; this one was the second generation. All I had to do now was to pass James the envelope. Then I was done.

I patted the outside of my sport jacket, just over the left breast pocket. “I assume Dennis mentioned that I was gonna give you a little cash today to get things going.”

James nodded. “Yes; that would be excellent.”

“Okay,” said the Chef, “well, I don't think you guys need me around for this, so I'm gonna get going.” And just like that he rose from the couch. “Is that okay with you, James?”

James shrugged. “Yes, no problem.”

The Chef looked at me. “Is it okay with you?”

No, I thought, I gotta check with the guys in the bedroom first. “Sure,” I said quickly, “it's fine.”