I woke up in Sardinia, as the destroyer pulled into Porto Cervo. All eighteen of us stood on the main deck, watching in awe as hundreds of Sardinians waved at us. A dozen news crews, each with a video camera, were anxious to film the idiot Americans who’d been foolish enough to sail out into the middle of a Force 8 gale.
On our way off the destroyer, the Duchess and I thanked our Italian rescuers and exchanged phone numbers with them. We told them that if they were ever in the States, they should look us up. I offered them money—for their bravery and heroism—and every last one of them refused. They were an incredible bunch—first-class heroes, in the truest sense of the word.
As we made our way through the throngs of Sardinians, it occurred to me that we’d lost all our clothes. For the Duchess, it was round two. But that was fine: I was about to receive a very large check from Lloyd’s of London—which had insured the boat and helicopter. After we checked into the hotel, I took everyone shopping, guests and crew alike. All we could find was resort wear—exploding shades of pink and purple and yellow and red and gold and silver. We would be spending ten days in Sardinia looking like human peacocks.
Ten days later, the Ludes were gone and it was time to go home. It was then that I came up with the terrific idea to box up all our clothes and have them shipped back to the States, avoiding Customs. The Duchess agreed.
The next morning, a little before six, I went down to the lobby to pay the hotel bill. It was $700,000. It wasn’t as bad as it seemed, though, because the bill included a $300,000 gold bangle studded with rubies and emeralds. I’d bought it for the Duchess somewhere around the fifth day, after I’d fallen asleep in a chocolate soufflé. It was the least I could do to make amends to my chief enabler.
At the airport, we waited two hours for my private jet. Then a tiny man who worked at the private-jet terminal walked up to me and said, in heavily accented English: “Mr. Belforte, your plane crash. Seagull fly in engine, and plane go down in France. It will not come to get you.”
I was speechless. Did things like this happen to anyone else? I didn’t think so. When I informed the Duchess, she didn’t say a word. She just shook her head and walked away.
I tried to call Janet—to make new flight arrangements—but the phones were impossible to use. I decided that our best bet was to fly to England, where we could understand what the f**k people were saying. Once we got to London, I knew everything would be fine—until we were sitting in the back of a black London taxi and I noticed something odd: The streets were insanely crowded. In fact, the closer we got to Hyde Park, the more crowded it became.
I said to the pasty-faced British cabbie, “Why is it so crowded? I’ve been to London dozens of times and I’ve never seen it like this.”
“Well, governor,” said the cabbie, “we’re having our Woodstock celebration this weekend. There are over half a million people in Hyde Park. Eric Clapton’s performing, the Who, Alanis Morissette, and some others as well. It’s going to be a jolly good show, governor. I hope you have hotel reservations, because there’s scarcely a room anywhere in London.”
Hmmm… there were three things that now astonished me: The first was that this f**king cabbie kept addressing me as “governor” the second was that I happened to show up in London on the first weekend since World War II where there were no hotel rooms available in the entire city; and the third was that we all needed to go shopping for clothes again—which would be the Duchess’s third time in less than two weeks.
Rob said to me, “I can’t believe we gotta go buy clothes again. Are you still paying?”
I smiled and said, “Go f**k yourself, Rob.”
In the lobby of the Dorchester Hotel, the concierge said, “I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Belfort, but we’re booked solid for the entire weekend. In fact, I don’t believe there’s a room available anywhere in London. Feel free, though, to bring your party into the bar area. It’s teatime, you know, and it would be my pleasure to offer you complimentary tea and finger sandwiches for all your guests.”
I rolled my neck, trying to maintain my composure. “Could you call some other hotels and see if there’re any rooms available?”
“Of course,” he replied. “It would be my pleasure.”
Three hours later we were still in the bar, drinking tea and munching on crumpets, when the concierge walked in with a great smile and said, “There’s been a cancellation at the Four Seasons. It happens to be the Presidential Suite, which is particularly well-suited to your tastes. The cost is eight—”
I cut him off. “I’ll take it!”
“Very well,” he said. “We have a Rolls-Royce waiting for you outside. From what I hear, the hotel has a very nice spa; perhaps a massage might be in order after all you’ve been through.”
I nodded in agreement, and two hours later I was lying faceup on a massage table, in the Presidential Suite of the Four Seasons Hotel. The balcony looked out over Hyde Park, where the concert was now under way.
My guests were gallivanting around the streets of London, shopping for clothes; Janet was busy at work, arranging flights on the Concorde; and the luscious Duchess was in the shower, competing with Eric Clapton.
I loved my luscious Duchess. Once again she’d proven herself to me, and this time under intense pressure. She was a warrior—standing toe to toe with me, facing down death, keeping a smile on that gorgeous face of hers all the while.
It was for that very reason, in fact, why I was finding it so difficult to maintain my erection right now, as a six-foot-tall Ethiopian masseuse jerked me off. Of course, I knew it was wrong to be getting a hand job from a masseuse while my wife was singing in the shower, twenty feet away. Yet…was there really any difference between getting a hand job and jerking myself off with my own hand?
Hmmm…I held on to that comforting thought for the remainder of my hand job, and the next day I found myself back in Old Brookville, ready to resume Lifestyles of the Rich and Dysfunctional.
CHAPTER 35
THE STORM BEFORE THE STORM
April 1997
As impossible as it might seem, nine months after the sinking of the yacht, my life had sunk to even deeper levels of insanity. I had found a clever way—an altogether logical way, in fact—to take my self-destructive behavior to a new extreme, namely, by changing my drug of choice from Quaaludes to coc**ne. Yes, it was time for a change, I’d figured, with my chief motivating factor being that I was fed up with drooling in public places and falling asleep in inappropriate settings.
So, rather than starting off my day with four Quaaludes and a tall glass of iced coffee, I woke up to a gram of Bolivian marching powder—always careful to split the dose equally, a half gram up each nostril, so as not to deprive either side of my brain of the instantaneous rush. It was the true Breakfast of Champions. Then I’d round out my breakfast with three milligrams of Xanax, to quell the paranoia that was sure to follow. After that—and in spite of my back being completely pain-free now—I would take forty-five milligrams of morph**e, simply because coc**ne and narcotics were made for each other. Besides, since I still had a bunch of doctors prescribing me morph**e, how bad could it be?
Either way, an hour before lunchtime I would take my first dose of Quaaludes—four, to be exact—followed by another gram of coke, to ward off the uncontrollable tiredness that was sure to follow. Of course, I still managed to consume my daily dose of twenty Quaaludes, but at least now I was using them in a healthier way, a more productive way—to balance out the coke.
It was an inspired strategy, and it had worked perfectly, for a time. But like all things in life, there were a few bumps along the way. In this particular instance, the main bump was that I was sleeping only three hours a week, and by mid-April I was in the midst of a coc**ne-induced paranoia that was so deep I’d actually taken a few potshots at the milkman with a twelve-gauge shotgun.
With a bit of luck, I figured, the milkman would spread the word that the Wolf of Wall Street was not a man to be trifled with, that he was armed and ready—fully prepared to ward off any intruder foolish enough to come on his property—even if his bodyguards were sleeping on the job.
Whatever the case, it had been in mid-December, four months ago, when Stratton was finally shut down. Ironically, it wasn’t the states who’d lowered the boom on Stratton but the bumbling bozos at the NASD. They had revoked Stratton’s membership—citing stock manipulation and sales-practice violations. In essence, Stratton had been shunned, and from a legal standpoint it was a deathblow. Membership in the NASD was a prerequisite for selling securities across state lines; without it, you might as well be out of business. So, reluctantly, Danny closed down Stratton, and the era of the Strattonite came to a close. It had been an eight-year run. Just how it would be remembered I wasn’t quite sure, although I suspected the press wouldn’t be kind to it.
Biltmore and Monroe Parker were still going strong and still paying me a million dollars per deal, although I considered it a distinct possibility that the owners, other than Alan Lipsky, were plotting against me. Just how and why, I wasn’t quite certain, but such was the nature of plots—especially when the conspirators were your closest friends.
On a separate note, Steve Madden was plotting against me. Our relationship had completely soured. According to Steve, it had to do with me showing up at the office stoned, to which I’d said to him, “Go f**k yourself, you self-righteous bastard! If it weren’t for me you’d still be selling shoes out of the trunk of your car!” True or not, the simple fact was that the stock was trading at thirteen dollars and it was on its way to twenty.
We had eighteen stores now, and our department-store business was booked out two seasons in advance. I could only imagine what he was thinking about me—the man who had taken eighty-five percent of his company and controlled the price of his stock for almost four years. Yet now that Stratton was out of business, I no longer had control over his stock. The price of Steve Madden Shoes was being dictated by the laws of supply and demand—rising and falling with the fortunes of the company itself, not the fortunes of any particular brokerage firm that was recommending it. The Cobbler had to be plotting against me. Yes, it was true: I had shown up at the office a bit stoned, and that was wrong, but, still, that was merely an excuse to force me out of the company and steal my stock options. And what was my recourse if he tried doing that?
Well, I had our secret agreement, but that covered only my original shares, 1.2 million of them; my stock options were in Steve’s name, and I had nothing in writing. Would he try to steal them from me? Or would he try to steal everything—both my stock and my options? Perhaps that bald bastard had deluded himself, thinking I wouldn’t have the balls to expose our secret agreement, that by its very nature it would cause both of us too many problems if I made it public.
He was in for a rude awakening. The chances of him getting away with stealing my stock and options were less than zero—even if it meant both of us going to jail.