Текст книги "The Wolf of Wall Street "

Автор книги: Jordan Belfort

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 39 страниц)

Yet with all the insanity, it was Mad Max who was the smiling coach of all my Little League teams, and it was Mad Max who was the first father to wake up on Sunday mornings and go downstairs and throw a ball around with his kids. He was the one who held the back of my bicycle seat and pushed me down the cement walk in front of our apartment building and then ran behind me, and he was the one who came into my bedroom at night and lay with me—running his fingers through my hair as I suffered with night terrors. He was the one who never missed a school play or a parent–teacher conference or music recital or anything else, for that matter, where he could relish his children and show us that we were loved.

He was a complicated man, my father; a man of great mental capacity who was driven to succeed yet humbled into mediocrity by his own emotional limitations. After all, how could a man like this function in the corporate world? Would such behavior be tolerated? How many jobs had he lost because of it? How many promotions had passed him by? And how many windows of opportunity had been slammed shut as a result of the Mad Max persona?

But all that changed with Stratton Oakmont, a place where Mad Max could unleash his fiery wrath with complete impunity. In fact, what better way for a Strattonite to prove his loyalty than to get berated by Mad Max and suck it up for the greater good, meaning: to live the Life. So a baseball bat to your car window or a public tongue-lashing was considered a rite of passage for a young Strattonite, to be worn like a badge of honor.

So there was Mad Max and Sir Max, and the idea was to figure out a way to bring out Sir Max. My first trial balloon was the one-on-one approach. I looked at Kenny and Danny and said, “Why don’t you guys give me a few minutes to talk to my father alone, okay?”

No arguments there! The two of them left with such alacrity that my father and I had barely made it to the couch, only ten feet away, when the door slammed shut behind them. My father sat down and lit up another cigarette and took one of his enormous pulls. I plopped myself down to his right, leaned back, and put my feet up on a glass coffee table in front of us.

I smiled sadly and said, “I swear to God, Dad, my back is fucking killing me. You have no idea. The pain’s going right down the back of my left leg. It’s enough to drive a person insane.”

My father’s face immediately softened. Apparently, trial balloon number one was off to a flying start. “Well, what do the doctors say?”

Hmmmmm…I hadn’t detected any hint of a British accent in those last few words; nonetheless, my back really was killing me and I was definitely making progress with him. “Doctors? What the fuck do they know? The last surgery made it even worse. And all they do is give me pills that upset my stomach and don’t do shit for the pain.” I shook my head some more. “Whatever, Dad. I don’t wanna worry you. I’m just venting.” I took my feet off the coffee table, leaned back, and spread my arms out on either side of the couch. “Listen,” I said softly, “I know it’s hard for you to make sense of all this craziness around here, but trust me, there’s a method to my madness, especially when it comes to the spending. It’s important to keep these guys chasing the dream. And it’s even more important to keep them broke.” I gestured over to the plate glass. “Look at them; as much money as they make, every last one of them is broke! They spend every dime they have, trying to keep up with my lifestyle. But they can’t, because they don’t make enough. So they end up living paycheck to paycheck on a million bucks a year. It’s hard to imagine, considering how you grew up, but, nevertheless, it is what it is.

“Anyway, keeping them broke makes them easier to control. Think about it: Virtually every last one of them is leveraged to the hilt, with cars and homes and boats and all the rest of that crap, and if they miss even one paycheck they’re up shit’s creek. It’s like having golden handcuffs on them. I mean, the truth is I could afford to pay them more than I do. But then they wouldn’t need me as much. But if I paid them too little, then they would hate me. So I pay them just enough so they love me but still need me. And as long as they need me they’ll always fear me.”

My father was staring at me intently, hanging on every word. “One day”—I gestured with my chin toward the plate glass—“all that will be gone, and so will all that so-called loyalty. And when that day comes, I don’t want you to have any knowledge of some of the things that went on here. That’s why I’m evasive with you sometimes. It’s not that I don’t trust you or that I don’t respect you—or that I don’t value your opinion. It’s the opposite, Dad. I keep things from you because I love you, and because I admire you, and because I want to protect you from the fallout when all this starts to unwind.”

Sir Max, in a concerned tone: “Why are you talking like this? Why does all this have to unwind? The companies you’re taking public are all legitimate, aren’t they?”

“Yes. It has nothing to do with the companies. And the truth is, we’re not doing anything different than anybody else out there. We’re just doing it bigger and better, which makes us a target. Anyway, don’t worry about it. I’m just having a morbid moment. Everything will work out fine, Dad.”

Just then Janet’s voice came through the intercom: “I’m sorry for interrupting, but you have a conference call with Ike Sorkin and the rest of the lawyers. They’re on the line right now and they have their billing clocks ticking. Do you want them to hold or should I reschedule it?”

Conference call? I didn’t have any conference call! And then it hit me: Janet was bailing me out! I looked at my father and shrugged, as if to say, “What can I do? I gotta take this call.”

We quickly exchanged hugs and apologies, and then I made a pledge to try to spend less in the future, which both of us knew was complete bullshit. Nevertheless, my father had come in like a lion and gone out like a lamb. And just as the door closed behind him, I made a mental note to give Janet a little something extra for Christmas, in spite of all the crap she’d given me this morning. She was a good egg—a damn good egg.

CHAPTER 8

THE COBBLER

About an hour later, Steve Madden was making his way to the front of the boardroom with a confident gait. It was the sort of gait, I thought, of a man in complete control, a man who had every intention of giving a first-class dog-and-pony show. But when he reached the front of the boardroom—that look on his face! Sheer terror!

And the way he was dressed!It was ridiculous. He looked like a broken-down driving-range pro who’d traded in his golf clubs for two pints of malt liquor and a one-way ticket to Skid Row. It was ironic that Steve’s business was fashion, considering he was one of the least fashionable dressers on the planet. He was the wacky-designer type, an over-the-top artsy-fartsy guy, who walked around town holding a horrendous-looking platform shoe in his hand as he offered unsolicited explanations as to why this shoe would be what every teenage girl would be dying to wear next season.

At this particular moment he was wearing a wrinkled navy blazer, which hung on his thin frame like a piece of cheap boat canvas. The rest of his ensemble was no better. He wore a ripped gray T-shirt and white peg-legged Levi’s jeans, both of which had stains on them.

But it was his shoes that were the greatest insult. After all, one would think that anyone who was trying to pass himself off as a legitimate shoe designer would have the common decency to get a fucking shine the day he was going public. But, no, not Steve Madden; he had on a pair of cheap brown leather penny loafers that hadn’t seen a high-shine rag since the day the calf was slaughtered. And, of course, his trademark royal-blue baseball cap covered his few remaining strands of wispy strawberry-blond hair, which, in typical downtown fashion, had been pulled back into a ponytail and tied with a rubber band.

Steve reluctantly grabbed the microphone off a maple-colored lectern and said a couple of quick uhh-hummsand uhh-hoos,sending a clear signal that he was ready to start the show. Slowly—very slowly, in fact—the Strattonites hung up their phones and leaned back in their chairs.

All at once I felt some terrific vibrations coming from my left—almost a mini-earthquake. I turned to see… Christ, it was fat Howie Gelfand!Four hundred pounds if he was an ounce!

“Hey, JB,” said fat Howie. “I need you to do me real solid and flip me an extra ten thousand units of Madden. Could you do that for your uncle Howie?” He smiled from ear to ear, and then cocked his head to the side and put his arm around my shoulder, as if to say, “Come on, we’re buddies, right?”

Well, I kind of liked fat Howie despite the fact that he was a fat bastard. But that aside, his request for additional units was par for the course. After all, a unit of a Stratton new issue was more valuable than gold. All you had to do was some simple math: A unit consisted of one share of common stock and two warrants, an A and a B, each of which gave you the right to buy one additional share of stock at a price slightly above the initial offering price. In this particular instance, the initial offering price was four dollars a share; the A warrant was exercisable at four-fifty and the B warrant at five dollars. And as the price of the stock rose, the value of the warrants rose right along with it. So the leverage was staggering.

A typical Stratton new issue consisted of two million units offered at four dollars per, which by itself wasn’t all that spectacular. But with a football field full of young Strattonites—smiling and dialing and ripping people’s eyeballs out—demand dramatically outstripped supply. In consequence, the price of the units would soar to twenty dollars or more the moment they started trading. So, to give a client a block of 10,000 units was like giving him a six-figure gift. There was no difference, which was why the client was expected to play ball—meaning: For every unit he was given at the initial-public-offering price, he was expected to purchase ten times as manyafter the deal began trading publicly (in the aftermarket).

“All right,” I muttered. “You can have your extra ten thousand units because I love you and I know you’re loyal. Now go lose some weight before you have a heart attack.”

With a great smile and a hearty tone: “I hail you, JB. I hail you!” He did his best to take a bow. “You are the King…the Wolf…you’re everything! Your wish is my—”

I cut him off. “Get the fuck out of here, Gelfand. And make sure none of the kids in your section start booing Madden or throwing shit at him. I’m serious, okay?”

Howie began taking small steps backward and bowing toward me with his arms extended in front of him, the way a person does when they’re leaving a royal chamber after an audience with a king.

What a fat fucking bastard, I thought. But such a wonderful salesman! Smooth as silk he was. Howie had been one of my first employees—only nineteen when he came to work for me. His first year in the business he’d made $250,000. This year he was on pace to make $1.5 million. Nevertheless, he still lived at home with his parents.

Just then came more rumblings from the microphone: “Uh…excuse me, everyone. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Steve Madden. I’m the president—”

Before he could even finish his first thought, the Strattonites were on him:

“We all know who you are!”

“Nice fucking baseball cap!”

“Time is money! Get to the fucking point!”

Then came some boos and hisses and whistles and catcalls and a couple a hoo-yaaas. Then the room began to quiet down again.

Steve glanced over at me. His mouth was slightly parted and his brown eyes were as wide as saucers. I extended my arms, palms toward him, and moved them up and down a few times, as if to say, “Calm down and take it easy!”

Steve nodded and took a deep breath. “I’d like to start by telling you a little bit about myself and my background in the shoe industry. And then, after that, I’d like to discuss the bright plans I have for my company’s future. I first started working in a shoe store when I was sixteen years old, sweeping the stockroom floor. And while all my other friends were out running around town chasing girls, I was learning about women’s shoes. I was like Al Bundy, with a shoehorn sticking out my back—”

Another interruption: “The microphone’s too far from your mouth. We can’t hear a fucking word you’re saying! Move the mike closer.”

Steve moved the microphone. “Well, sorry about that. Uh—like I was saying, I’ve been in the shoe industry for as far back as I can remember. My first job was at a little shoe store in Cedarhurst called Jildor Shoes, where I worked in the stockroom. Then I became a salesman. And it was…uh…then…back when I was still a kid…that I first fell in love with women’s shoes. You know, I can honestly say…”

And just like that he began giving a remarkably detailed explanation of how he’d been a true lover of women’s shoes since he was in his early teens, and how somewhere along the way—he wasn’t sure where—he had become fascinated with the endless design possibilities for women’s shoes, insofar as the different types of heels and straps and flaps and buckles, and all the different sorts of fabrics he could work with, and all the decorative ornaments he could stick on them. Then he began explaining how he liked to caress the shoes and run his fingers along the insteps.

At this point I snuck a glance into the heart of the boardroom. What I saw were some very puzzled looks on the faces of the Strattonites. Even the sales assistants, who could usually be counted on to maintain some sense of decorum, were cocking their heads in disbelief. Some of them were rolling their eyes.

Then, all at once, they attacked: “What a fucking homo!”

“That’s some sick shit, man!”

“You queer! Get a fucking life!”

Then came more boos and hisses and whistles and catcalls, and now some foot-stomping—a clear sign they were entering phase two of the torture treatment.

Danny walked over, shaking his head. “I’m fucking embarrassed,” he muttered.

I nodded. “Well, at least he agreed to put our stock in escrow. It’s a shame we couldn’t get the papers drawn up today, but it ain’t a perfect world. Anyway, he’s gotta stop with this shit or they’re gonna eat him up alive.” I shook my head. “I don’t know, though…I just went over this shit with him a few minutes ago and he seemed okay. He’s actually got a good company. He needs to just tell the story. I mean, he’s your friend and everything, but he’s a fucking crackpot!”

Danny, tonelessly: “Always has been, even in public school.”

I shrugged. “Whatever. I’ll give it another minute or so and then I’ll go up there.”

Just then Steve looked over at us, and the sweat was pouringoff him. He had a dark circle on his chest the size of a sweet potato. I waved my hand in small circles, as if to say, “Speed it up!” Then I mouthed the words: “Talk about your plans for the company!”

He nodded. “Okay—I’d like to tell everybody about how Steve Madden Shoes got started and then talk about our bright future!”

The last two words resulted in some eye-rolling and a little bit of head-shaking, but, thankfully, the boardroom remained quiet.

Steve lumbered on: “I started my company with one thousand dollars and a single shoe. It was called the Marilyn”– Christ almighty!—“which was sort of like a Western clog. It was a great shoe—not my best shoe, but still a great shoe. Anyway, I was able to get five hundred pairs made on credit, and I started going around and selling them out of the trunk of my car to any store that would buy them. How could I describe this shoe to you? Let me see…it had a chunky bottom and an open toe, but the top of it was…well, I guess it doesn’t really matter. The point I was trying to make was that it was a really funky shoe, which is the trademark of Steve Madden Shoes: We’re funky.

“Anyway, the shoe that really launched the company was called the Mary Lou, and this shoe …well, thiswas no ordinary shoe!” Oh, Jesus! What a fucking fruitcake!“It was way ahead of its time—way ahead!” Steve waved his hand in the air, as if to say, “Forget about it!” And he kept right on going. “Anyway, let me describe it to you, because this is important. Now, it was a black patent-leather variation of the traditional Mary Jane, with a relatively thin ankle strap. But the key was that it had a bump toe. Some of you girls here must know exactly what I’m talking about, right? I mean—it was really a hot shoe!” He paused, obviously hoping for some positive feedback from the sales assistants, but none came—only more head-shaking. Then there was an eerie, poisonous silence, the sort of silence you find in a small town in the middle of Kansas the moment before a tornado hits.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a paper airplane sail across the boardroom in no particular direction. At least they weren’t throwing things directly at him! That would come next. I said to Danny, “The natives are getting restless. Should I go up there?”

“If you don’t, I will. This is fucking nauseating!”

“All right, I’m going.” I made a beeline for Steve.

He was still talking about the Mary fucking Lou when I reached him. Just before I grabbed the microphone he was talking about how shewas the perfect prom shoe, priced reasonably and built to last.

I grabbed the mike out of his hand before he knew what hit him, and it was then that I realized he’d gotten so absorbed in the glory of his own shoe designs that he had actually stopped sweating. In fact, he seemed completely at ease now and was entirely unaware that he was about to get lynched.

He whispered to me, “What are you doing? They love me! You can go back now. I got it covered!”

I narrowed my eyes. “Get the fuck out of here, Steve! They’re about to start throwing tomatoes at you. Are you that blind? I mean, they don’t give a shit about the Mary fucking Lou! They just want to sell your stock and make money. Now, go over to Danny and relax for a while, before they come up here and rip off your baseball cap and scalp the last seven hairs off your head!”

Finally, Steve capitulated, and he walked off center stage. I raised my right hand, asking for quiet, and the room fell silent. With the microphone just beneath my lips, I said in a mocking tone, “All right, everyone, let’s give a big round of applause to Steve Madden and his very special shoe. After all, just hearing about little Mary has inspired me to pick up the phone and start calling all my clients. So I want every last one of you—sales assistants included—to put your hands together for Steve Madden and his sexy little shoe: the Mary Lou!” I wedged the microphone under my arm and started clapping.

And just like that—thunderous applause! Every last Strattonite was clapping and stomping and hooting and howling and cheering uncontrollably. I raised the microphone in the air again—asking for quiet—but this time they didn’t listen. They were too busy seizing the moment.

Finally, the room quieted down. “All right,” I said, “now that that’s out of your system, I want you to know that there’s a reason why Steve is so completely off the wall. In other words, there’s a method to his madness. See, the simple fact is that the guy’s a creative genius, and by definition Steve has to be somewhat insane. It’s necessary for his image.”

I nodded my head with conviction, wondering if what I’d just said made even the slightest bit of sense. “But listen to me, everyone, and listen good. This ability Steve has—this gift of his—goes far beyond being able to spot a couple of hot shoe trends. Steve’s real power—what separates him from every other shoe designer in America—is that he actually createstrends.

“Do you know how rare that is? To find someone who can actually set a fashion trend and enforce it? People like Steve come along once every decade! And when they do, they become household names, like a Coco Chanel or an Yves St. Laurent, or a Versace, or Armani, or Donna Karan…or a short list of others.”

I took a few steps into the boardroom and lowered my voice like a preacher driving home a point. “And having someone like Steve at the helm is exactly what it takes to launch a company like this into the stratosphere. And you can mark my words on it! This is the company we’ve all been waiting for since the beginning. It’s the one that’ll put Stratton on a whole new plateau. It’s the one that we’ve been…”

I was on a roll now, and as I continued speaking, my mind started to double track. I began totaling up the profits I was about to make. The awesome number $20 millioncame bubbling up into my brain. It was a good estimate, I figured, and the calculations were pretty simple. Of the two million units being offered, one million of them were going into the accounts of my ratholes. I would buy those units back from my ratholes at five or six dollars per and then hold them in the firm’s proprietary trading account. Then I would use the power of the boardroom, the massive buying this very meeting would create, to drive the units up to twenty dollars, which would lock in a paper profit of $14 or $15 million. Although, actually, I wouldn’t even have to drive the units up to twenty dollars myself; the rest of Wall Street would do the dirty work for me. As long as the other brokerage firms and trading firms knew I was willing to buy the units back at the top of the market, they would drive the price up as high as I wanted! I just had to leak the word out to a few key players and the rest would be history. (And this I’d already done.) The word on the street was that Stratton was a buyer up to twenty dollars a unit, so the wheels were already set in motion! Unbelievable!To make all that money and not commit a crime! Well, the ratholes weren’t exactly on the up-and-up, but still, it was impossible to prove. Ahhhh, talk about your unbridled capitalism!

“…like a rocket ship and keep on going. Who knows how high this stock could go? The twenties? The thirties? I mean, if I’m even half right, those numbers are ridiculously low! They’re nothing compared to what this company is capable of. In the blink of an eye the stock could be in the fifties or even the sixties! And I’m not talking about some far-off time in the future. I’m talking about right now, as we speak.

“Listen to me, everyone. Steve Madden Shoes is the hottest company in the entire women’s shoe industry. Orders are going through the roof right now! Every department store in America—chains like Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s, Nordstrom and Dillard’s—they can’t keep our shoes in stock. The shoes are so hot they’re literally flying off the shelves!

“You know, I hope you’re all aware that as stockbrokers you have an obligation to your clients, a fiduciary responsibilityso to speak, to get on the phone with them the second I’m finished and do whatever it takes—even if it means ripping their fucking eyeballs out—to get them to buy as much stock in Steve Madden Shoes as they can possibly afford. I sincerely hope you’re aware of this, because if you’re not, then you and I are going to have some serious issues together after all this is said and done.

“You have an obligation here! An obligation to your clients! An obligation to this firm! And an obligation to yourself, God damn it! You better ram this stock right down your clients’ throats and make them choke on it until they say, ‘Buy me twenty thousand shares,’ because every dollar your clients invest is gonna come back to them in spades.

“I mean, I could go on and on about the bright future of Steve Madden Shoes. I could talk about all the fundamentals—about all the new store openings and how we manufacture our shoes in a more cost-effective way than the competition, about how our shoes are so hot that we don’t even have to advertise and how the mass merchants are willing to pay us royalties to have access to our designs—but at the end of the day none of it matters. The bottom line is that all your clients wanna know is that the stock’s going up; that’s it.”

I slowed my pace a bit and said, “Listen, guys, as much as I’d like to, I can’t get on the phone and sell the stock to your clients. Only youcan pick up the phone and take action. And at the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about: taking action. Without action, the best intentions in the world are nothing more than that: intentions.”

I took a deep breath and plowed on. “Now, I want everybody to look down.” I extended my arm and gestured to a desk just in front of me. “Look down at that little black box right in front of you. You see it? It’s a wonderful little invention called the telephone. Here, I’ll spell it for you: T-E-L-E-P-H-O-N-E. Now, guess what, everybody? This telephone won’t dial itself! Yeah, that’s right. Until you take some fucking action, it’s nothing more than a worthless hunk of plastic. It’s like a loaded M16 without a trained Marine to pull the trigger. See, it’s the action of a highly trained Marine—a trained killer—that turns an M16 into a deadly weapon. And in the case of the telephone it’s the action of you—a highly trained Strattonite, a highly trained killer who won’t take no for an answer, who won’t hang up the phone until his client either buys or dies, someone who’s fully aware that there’s a sale being made on every single phone call and that it’s only a question of who’s selling who. Were you the one who did the selling? Were you proficient enough and motivated enough and gutsy enough to take control of the conversation and close the sale? Or was it your client who did the selling—explaining how he couldn’t make the investment right now because the timing was wrong or he needed to talk it over with his wife or his business partner or Santa Claus or the fucking tooth fairy.”

I rolled my eyes and shook my head in disgust. “So don’t you ever fucking forget that that phone sitting on your desk is a deadly weapon. And in the hands of a motivated Strattonite it’s a license to print money. And it’s the great equalizer!” I paused, letting those last two words reverberate around the boardroom, and then I kept right on going. “All you gotta do is pick up the phone and say the words I’ve taught you, and it can make you as powerful as the most powerful CEO in the country. And I don’t care whether you graduated from Harvard or you grew up on the mean streets of Hell’s Kitchen: With that little black phone you can achieve anything.

“That phone equals money. And I don’t care how many problems you have right now, because every single one of them can be helped with money. Yeah, that’s right; money is the greatest single problem-solver known to man, and anyone who tries to tell you different is completely full of shit. In fact, I’m willing to bet that anyone who says that never had a dime to their fucking name!” I held my hand up in the scout’s honor mode, and said with piss and vinegar, “It’s always those same people who are the first to spew out their worthless advice—it’s always the paupers, who sling around that ridiculous line of bullshit about how money is the root of all evil and about how money corrupts. Well—I—mean– really!What a bunch of happy horseshit that is! Having money is wonderful! And having money is a must!

“Listen to me, everyone: There’s no nobility in poverty. I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor, and I choose rich every time. At least as a rich man, when I have to face my problems, I can show up in the back of a stretch limousine, wearing a two-thousand-dollar suit and a twenty-thousand-dollar gold watch! And, believe me, arriving in style makes your problems a helluva lot easier to deal with.”

I shrugged my shoulders for effect. “Anyway, if anyone here thinks I’m crazy or you don’t feel exactly like I do, then get the fuck out of this room right now!That’s right—get the fuck out of my boardroom and go get a job at McDonald’s flipping burgers, because that’s where you belong! And if McDonald’s isn’t hiring, there’s always Burger King!

“But before you actually depart this room full of winners, I want you to take a good look at the person sitting next to you, because one day in the not-so-distant future, you’ll be sitting at a red light in your beat-up old Pinto, and the person sitting next to you is gonna pull up in his brand-new Porsche, with his gorgeous young wife sitting next to him. And who’ll be sitting next to you? Some ugly beast, no doubt, with three days of razor stubble—wearing a sleeveless muumuu or a housedress—and you’ll probably be on your way home from the Price Club with a hatchback full of discount groceries!”

Just then I locked eyes with a young Strattonite who looked literally panic-stricken. Hammering my point home, I said, “What? You think I’m lying to you? Well, guess what? It only gets worse. See, if you want to grow old with dignity—if you want to grow old and maintain your self-respect—then you better get rich now. The days of working for a large Fortune Five Hundred company and retiring with a pension are ancient fucking history! And if you think Social Security is gonna be your safety net, then think again. At the current rate of inflation it’ll be just enough to pay for your diapers after they stick you in some rancid nursing home, where a three-hundred-pound Jamaican woman with a beard and mustache will feed you soup through a straw and then bitch-slap you when she’s in a bad mood.

“So listen to me, and listen good: Is your current problem that you’re behind on your credit-card bills? Good—then pick up the fucking phone and start dialing.

“Or is your landlord threatening to dispossess you? Is that what your problem is? Good—then pick up the fucking phone and start dialing.

“Or is it your girlfriend? Does she want to leave you because she thinks you’re a loser? Good—then pick up the fucking phone and start dialing!