Catching the Wolf of Wall Street

OCD and the Bastard started chuckling. “So what other intelligence did you gather?” asked the Bastard.

I nodded, eager to change the subject. “Well, I also found out that he’d snorted his last two businesses right up his nose. See, before the ambulette service there was a messenger service in Manhattan, and that’s when he started smoking crack: with the bike messengers. That was the start of Danny’s financial demise. Before that, he’d always been successful; now, however, he was a shell of his former self. His confidence was shattered; his bank account depleted; and his wife, never a bowl of cherries to begin with, was determined to turn his life into a living hell.

“Anyway, we didn’t leave the city that night until after midnight, and it was only then that I realized that I’d forgotten to call Denise. And it was also then when I started falling off an emotional cliff, hitting bottom just as we got off the exit ramp for Bayside, and I landed right smack in the heart of the worry phase.” I paused for a moment, feeling worried just thinking about the worry phase.

I took a deep breath and said, “This is phase three: a vicious onslaught of negative thoughts washing over you like a killer tsunami. You worry about everything: mistakes of the past, problems of the present, and anything that might pop up in the future. In Danny’s case, his worries had to do with money, and I knew this because, just as we pulled off the exit ramp, he said, ‘Citibank is about to foreclose on my condo and throw my family into the street. You think you can lend me ten thousand dollars? I have nowhere else to turn.’

“I took a deep breath, trying to draw power from Danny’s worries, figuring that if Danny’s life was in worse shape than mine, then how much did I really have to worry about? ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Do you have any Valium or Xanax to take the edge off? I’m not feeling so well.’

“He shook his head no. ‘I don’t have any. But why don’t you smoke the screen? There should be a little crack resin on it. It’ll make you feel better.’

“I nodded and grabbed the pipe. ‘Thanks; hold the wheel while I light up. I don’t wanna burn myself.’ And Danny grabbed the wheel, and that’s how we made our way through Bayside: with me smoking the screen and Danny steering the car.

“On our way up in the elevator we didn’t say a single word to each other. We didn’t even lock eyes. We were both too embarrassed. And I remember swearing to myself that I would never speak to him again. I knew someone like Danny could not be good for me. Someone who talked about his family the way he did, someone who consumed drugs the way he did, and someone who had the f**king audacity to lead me into the depth and despair of a Harlem crack den—I knew he would only bring out the worst in me.

“Anyway, the moment I stuck my key in the lock, the door swung open and there was Denise, crying. I looked at her with panic in my eyes. My heart was literally beating out of my chest. I threw my palms up in the air and opened my mouth to say something, but no words came out. That’s when I entered phase four, the suicide-contemplation phase.

“There are only two known antidotes to it: The first is the massive consumption of benzodiazepines—preferably Xanax or Valium and Klonopin. The second is massive quantities of sleep, on the order of two or three days. Anything less and you still might attempt suicide. And as I stood before Denise, reeking of urine and hookers and crack and funk, she took pity on me, and she loaded me up with enough Xanax to knock out a blue whale. Then she undressed me and tucked me in. And then I passed out.”

“Jesus,” muttered OCD.

I nodded in agreement. “Yeah,” I agreed, “Jesus is right. In fact, it would take me three days to recover, which takes us to Sunday morning. That’s when I entered the resurrection phase, which is the most productive phase of all. Your brain’s dopamine stores have fully replenished themselves, and you’re promising yourself that you’ve officially learned your lesson this time. You know what you did was completely foolish, and only a crazy person would do it again; and you’re definitely not a crazy person!

“What makes this phase so productive is that you can look at all your worries now with an icy detachment, dismissing the imagined ones and devising strategies to deal with the real ones. It’s a time of tremendous clarity, a time when a man takes stock of his life. And as long as you’re not a full-blown crack addict, thinking about heading back to the crack den again, you emerge from this experience a much better man, a more focused man, and—”

“Oh, please!” sputtered the Bastard. “Save your rationalizations for the less informed! Crack doesn’t make you better or more focused; it’s pure evil, nothing more.”

OCD let out a single chuckle. The Witch raised an eyebrow. I said to the Bastard, “You have an excellent point there, Joel, although, in this particular case, the resurrection phase happened to be unusually productive, because I quickly realized that I had only one thing to worry about, and that was the Investors’ Center. If George was right, then I needed to make a move now, before the shit hit the fan. To sit and wait would be like an ostrich sticking its head in the sand.

“So the next day I pulled Kenny aside and told him that I was ready to make a move. The Investors’ Center was on the way out, I explained to him, and we needed to start setting things up now, in anticipation.”

“What about your future partner-in-crime?” asked the Witch. “Did you lend Danny the money?”

God—how I would have loved to just smack her in that mousy little head of hers! I smiled warmly at the Witch and said, “Yes, Michele, I did, and if you want to know why, the answer is, I’m not really sure. On my way to the office I had every intention of firing him. I really did. But when I saw him sitting at his desk, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. He looked nervous and embarrassed. And when we finally locked eyes, he flashed me the saddest of smiles, then he put his head back down and started dialing again. I remember staring at him—watching him bang away at the phone—and feeling utterly confused inside.

“I really wanted to fire him, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. He had a wife and kid, both of whom I knew and both of whom I cared about. And I knew how talented he was, so greed was gnawing at me too. So I decided to lend him the money and keep him in the fold. I would just keep my guard up and make sure I controlled him.

“But a few days later, on my way into the building, the doorman stopped me and handed me a certified letter. I looked at the envelope and froze: It was from the SEC. Without even opening it, I knew it was a subpoena.”

“What was it for?” asked the Bastard.

“For records,” I answered, “as well as a personal appearance. And while it didn’t give a specific date, the next morning Lester Re-Morse called bright and early and said, ‘I think the Investors’ Center is going to shut its doors this week. In fact, it’ll be a miracle if they make it past Wednesday.’

“ ‘What the f**k are you talking about?’ I snapped. ‘How can the SEC shut them down before they even investigate them?’

“‘The SEC’s not shutting them down,’ he replied. ‘They’re shutting themselves down. They’re out of money.’

“Out of money! I thought. How the f**k could that be! ‘How on earth could they be out of money, Lester? They were making a fortune!’

“ ‘No, no,’ Lester squeaked. ‘They were making a couple a million a year at most, and they sucked it all out of the firm. The rest of Wall Street has been shorting their stocks since Wednesday, when word of the investigation leaked out. So it’s only a matter of time now.’”

I looked at my captors and shrugged. “And those were the famous last words from Lester Re-Morse. Brokerage firms all over Wall Street were shorting their stocks, figuring the investigation would put them out of business. So now the whole thing was becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“ ‘How long will it take to get my own firm started?’ I asked him.

“ ‘It’ll take you anywhere between six and ninth months.’

“‘Six to nine months! I don’t have six to nine months! I’ll lose everything if it takes that long.’ Then something else occurred to me. ‘Oh, Jesus! What about our paychecks, Lester? Monday is payday!’ to which he mumbled, ‘Yeah, well, you know… let’s just say that if I were you I wouldn’t hold my breath. Brokers never end up getting paid when this sort of thing happens. I would just write the whole thing off.’

“I started laughing at Lester’s words, because Danny was supposed to get his first paycheck on Monday. It was close to forty grand, and it would be the ultimate crushing blow for him. I knew right then that if I wanted to keep Danny in the fold I would have to carry him until I set things up. Yet Danny was only one of my problems. I had seven other people in my crew, and, as loyal as they were, they wouldn’t wait six to nine months. ‘There’s gotta be a quicker way, Lester. Six to nine months is a death sentence for me. I need to speak to Mike Valenoti; maybe he knows a way.’

“ ‘I already spoke to Mike,’ said Lester, ‘and he’s with you. He said he’d come to my office today and sit down with you if you’d like. We can meet at twelve.’

“‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll be there at twelve.’

“ ‘You know, come to think of it,’ said Lester, ‘you could start off as a branch of another brokerage firm. It’s called an OSJ, which stands for Office of Supervisory Jurisdiction, and—’

“I cut him off. ‘Yeah, I know what an OSJ is, and they’re a total nightmare. The owner constantly tries to f**k over the branch manager. I don’t want to start something that’s going to blow up in six months.’

“‘What you’re saying is true,’ replied Lester, ‘and normally I wouldn’t recommend one to you. But I happen to know a little firm that’s a diamond in the rough; they have no operations to speak of, just a tiny office on Maiden Lane, a block off Wall Street. You could open a small office on Long Island and pay them a percentage. The owner happens to be a very honest guy—an altogether lovely guy, in fact. But he lost all his money in the crash, and he’s on the verge of going bankrupt.’

“ ‘What’s his name?’

“ ‘Jim Taormina. And the firm is Stratton Securities.’”

“And there we go,” said OCD, with a smile.

The Bastard said, “Okay, so there we have it. We’re finally at the beginning—one day and five hours of cooperation later.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, “well, no one will ever accuse me of not being able to tell a good story, right?” I smiled warmly at my captors. I was at the guts of the story now, and it was a milestone of sorts. The four of us had bonded in a strange yet altogether pleasant way, and I couldn’t help but marvel at Magnum’s wisdom. In his absence, the walls of formality had come tumbling down, replaced by a hearty familiarity and esprit de corps. In fact, I finally felt like part of Team USA!

Alas, the Witch was quick to burst my bubble. “So this is when you embarked on your life of crime,” she said. “Everything before this was simply a warm-up.”

“So what happened next?” asked the Bastard.

I shrugged and let out a great sigh. “Well, the rest of the day was utter insanity. Before I went to Lester’s, I called George Grunfeld’s house, but his wife told me he wasn’t home. ‘He’s at the office taking care of paperwork,’ she said, and by the tone of her voice I could literally hear the paper shredder whirring in the background.

“Then I called the Blockhead and told him what was going on and that he better get down to the office to take care of our ‘paperwork’ before the federales raided the place. And then I called Danny and told him the bad news, that he wouldn’t be getting paid on Monday. Of course, Danny being Danny, he took the bad news in stride.

“ ‘I got bigger problems than that,’ he snarled.

“ ‘Oh, really?’ I said. ‘Like what?’

“‘Well, I’m still married to Nancy,’ he replied. ‘Isn’t that enough?’

“As usual, I resisted the urge to ask him why the f**k he’d married his first cousin in the first place. But I told him not to worry, that I would cover his mortgage and expenses and whatever else he needed until I sorted things out. To that, he thanked me graciously and told me that he was with me to the bitter end. Then I hung up the phone and headed for Lester’s.”

“I’m curious,” remarked the Bastard. “What kind of documents were you looking to destroy?”

“Scripts, mostly, and maybe some buy tickets and sell tickets. But, in truth, there wasn’t much I could destroy that wasn’t stored in two or three other places. Nevertheless, on my way to Lester’s there was a plan forming in my mind. Things were becoming very clear to me. In fact, this would mark the beginning of what I would come to think of as my Great Window of Clarity. It started on the car ride to Lester’s and lasted through the beginning of 1993, when I settled my case with the SEC and sold the firm to Danny for $180 million. It was a remarkable time in my life, a four-and-a-half-year period during which there was no problem too complicated for me to work through. My brain was in overdrive, it seemed. I could be going in twenty directions at the same time yet find each destination without making a single wrong turn.” I paused for a moment, considering my words.

“I’m not trying to sound cocky here; believe me, that’s the last way I feel right now. I’ve been humbled by my own life: by my drug addiction, by my indictment, and by my”—backstabbing— “wife leaving me on the courthouse steps. But I’m just trying to paint a picture for you, a picture of what I was like back then, so you can see why everyone followed me blindly: people like Mike Valenoti and my father, and Danny and Kenny and Jim Taormina, and, ultimately, thousands of other people who would come to work at Stratton.

“It was a time when I had all the answers, when I was able to master the brokerage business in a matter of days—both the operational side and the trading side. Mike would come to call me the world’s most able pupil, and many others would eventually call me just the same. And, alas, many of them belonged on a who’s who list of securities felons.” I shook my head sadly. “Anyway, I would look back at this time with mixed emotions, and with a healthy dose of wonder.

“In some ways, I think it was the very clarity that led me to drugs and hookers and to everything else. I’d always suffered from insomnia, but suddenly I found it impossible to sleep more than a couple hours each night. I couldn’t quiet down the thoughts that were roaring through my head. In the early nineties, I was managing the trading accounts of four different brokerage firms— Stratton, Monroe Parker, Biltmore, and a secret account I held at M. H. Meyerson, which I used to balance out the others—and I knew what each firm had in its account, right down to the share.” I paused for a moment, letting my words sink in.

“When the clarity finally faded, I found myself desperately trying to recapture it. I tried a dozen different businesses: I made movies, started a vitamin company, worked with Steve Madden Shoes; I even tried short-selling stocks—figuring I could make money attacking the industry I’d created.

“But, in the end, I couldn’t recapture it. I never got back to the point where I felt like my brain was firing on all cylinders.” I shook my head sadly. “Sometimes I wonder if I ever will. I mean, I know I have a long road ahead of me and that I’ll probably end up spending a considerable amount of time in jail, but after it’s all said and done—after I’ve done my time and paid my debt to society, so to speak—I wonder if I’ll ever accomplish anything extraordinary again. I wonder if I’ll ever have another window of clarity.” I let out a genuinely heartfelt sigh.

After a few moments of silence, OCD finally said, “I have a sneaky suspicion you will, but I hope for your sake—and for the sake of the public at large—that you do something more positive with your next window of clarity.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” said the Witch, and she narrowed her eyes at me and cocked her head to the side at a very knowing angle, as if she were studying a tiny lab specimen. “I think what bothers me most about you is how you took a God-given gift and misused it. A common thief or even a thug, for that matter, is much easier for me to stomach. But you—well, it was nothing more than greed that motivated you, greed in all its forms, for all things carnal, and for all things self-serving. It was that and an unbridled lust for power.”

There was more silence, as the Witch’s words hung in the air like nerve gas. Finally the Bastard said, in the tone of the peacemaker: “Well, I think we all agree that the final chapter of your life is yet to be written, but for now we need to stay focused on the present— or the past, I should say, and, more specifically, on your meeting at Lester’s office.”

Yes, I thought, you are my savior and protector, Bastard, and that speaks volumes as to the horrific status of my life. After all, you would like nothing more than to see me rotting away in a jail cell, yet there’s another human being in the room who wishes me even greater harm than you do.

I nodded and said, “Right… well, by the time I reached Lester’s office, my window of clarity was fully open, and I had worked things out in my mind. There were three things I needed to accomplish: First and foremost, I needed to cut a deal with Mike; second, I needed to cut a deal with Jim Taormina; and, third, I needed temporary office space to interview salesmen until my permanent space was set up.

“So when I got to Lester’s office, I didn’t waste a second. It was just the three of us this time—Lester, Mike, and myself—and I went right to work. ‘Just name your price and I’ll pay it,’ I said to Mike. ‘All I ask is that you take the bulk of your pay as a percentage of profits, or, better yet, as a percentage of revenue. This way you’ll never have to worry about me trying to f**k you over by running personal expenses through the company.’ I smiled at him, trying my best to ignore that world-class schnozolla of his. ‘I know how valuable you are, Mike, and I can’t do this without you. You’ve forgotten more about this business than I’ll ever learn. You’re my linchpin, my secret weapon.’

“Mike, of course, loved that, and I knew he would. See, on Wall Street, the back-office people are the unsung heroes, the ones who keep the machinery humming, while the brokers and bankers make a fortune. They’re dramatically underpaid, in my opinion, and they’re wildly underappreciated. So it came as no surprise to me when Mike said, ‘I don’t need a salary. Just pay me whatever you think is fair, and I’ll be fine with it.’