There were four cars inside the garage. The white two-door convertible Mercedes was closest, so I opened the passenger door and put Chandler into the passenger seat and slammed the door. As I ran around the back of the car, I saw one of the maids, Marissa, looking on in horror. I jumped inside the car and started it.
Then the Duchess was throwing herself against the passenger side of the car, banging on the window and screaming. I immediately hit the power-lock button. Then I saw the garage door starting to close. I looked to the right and saw Marissa’s finger on the button. Fuck it! I thought—and I put the car into drive, stepped on the accelerator, and drove right through the garage door, smashing it to splinters. I kept driving full speed—smashing right into a six-foot-high limestone pillar at the edge of the driveway. I looked over to Chandler. She wasn’t wearing a seat belt, but she was unharmed, thank God. She was screaming, crying hysterically.
All at once, some very disturbing thoughts began rising up my brain stem, starting with: What the f**k was I doing? Where the hell was I going? What was my daughter doing in the front seat of my car without a seat belt on? Nothing made sense. I opened the driver’s side door and stepped outside and just stood there. A second later, one of the bodyguards came running over to the car, grabbed Chandler, and ran into the house with her. That seemed like a good idea. Then the Duchess came over to me and told me that everything would be all right and that I needed to calm down. She told me she still loved me. She put her arms around me and hugged me.
And there we stood. For how long I would never know, but pretty soon I heard the wailing of a siren, and then I saw flashing lights. And then I was in handcuffs, sitting in the back of a police car, craning my neck around and trying to catch a last glimpse of the Duchess before they took me to jail.
I would spend the rest of my day being shuttled around to different jail cells—starting with the cell in the Old Brookville Police Department. Two hours later they handcuffed me once more and drove me to another police department, where I was escorted into another jail cell, although this one was bigger and full of people. I spoke to no one and no one spoke to me. There was lots of yelling and screaming and carrying on, and the place was freezing cold. I made a mental note to dress warm if Agent Coleman ever came knocking on my door with an arrest warrant. Then I heard my name being called, and a few minutes later I was in the backseat of another police car—on my way to the town of Mineola, where the state courthouse was.
I found myself in court, in front of a female judge…Oh, shit! My goose is cooked now! I turned to my dapper lawyer, Joe Fahmegghetti, and I said, “We’re f**ked now, Joe! This woman’s gonna give me the death penalty!”
Joe smiled at me and put his arm on my shoulder. “Relax,” he said. “I’ll have you outta here in ten minutes. Just don’t say a word until I tell you to.”
After a few minutes of blah-blah-blahing, Joe bent over and whispered in my ear, “Say not guilty,” so I smiled and said, “Not guilty.”
Ten minutes later I was free—walking out of the courthouse with Joe Fahmegghetti by my side. My limo was waiting outside the courthouse at the curb. George was behind the wheel and Rocco Night was in the front passenger seat. They both climbed out, and I noticed that Rocco was carrying my trusty LV bag. George opened the limousine door without saying a word, while Rocco made his way around the back of the car. He handed me my bag and said, “All your stuff’s in here, Mr. B, plus fifty thousand dollars in cash.”
My lawyer quickly added, “There’s a Learjet waiting for you at Republic Airport. George and Rocco will take you there.”
All at once I was confused. It was the Duchess plotting against me! No two ways about it! “What the f**k are you talking about?” I sputtered. “Where are you taking me?”
“To Florida,” said my dapper attorney. “David Davidson is waiting for you at Republic right now. He’ll fly down with you to keep you company. Dave Beall will be waiting for you in Boca when you land.” My attorney sighed. “Listen, my friend, you need to get away for a few days until we can resolve this with your wife. Or else you’re gonna end up in jail again.”
Rocco added, “I spoke to Bo, and he told me to stay up here and keep an eye on Mrs. B. You can’t go home, Mr. B. She’s got an order of protection against you; you’ll get arrested if you come on the property.”
I took a deep breath and tried to figure out whom I could trust…My attorney, yes…Rocco, yes…Dave Beall, yes…the dirty Duchess—NO! So what was the point of going home, anyway? She hated me and I hated her, and I would probably end up killing her if I saw her, and that would put a serious damper on my travel plans with Chandler and Carter. So, yes, perhaps a few days in the sun might do me some good.
I looked at Rocco and narrowed my eyes. “Is everything in there?” I asked accusingly. “All my medications?”
“I packed everything,” said a weary-looking Rocco. “All the stuff from your drawers and inside your desk, plus the cash Mrs. Belfort gave us. It’s all in there.”
Fair enough, I thought. Fifty thousand dollars should last me a couple of days. And the drugs…well, there ought to be enough of them in there to get Cuba stoned for the rest of April.
CHAPTER 37
SICK AND SICKER
The sheer insanity of it! We were cruising along at 39,000 feet and there were so many coc**ne molecules floating in the recirculated air that when I got up to go to the bathroom, I noticed that the two pilots were wearing gas masks. Good. They seemed like nice-enough guys, and I would hate to see them fail a drug test on my account.
I was on the run now. I was a fugitive! I needed to keep moving, to maintain. To rest was to die. To allow my head to come down, to allow myself to crash, to allow my thoughts to focus in on what had just happened, that was certain death!
Yet…why had it happened? Why had I kicked the Duchess down the stairs? She was my wife. I loved her more than anything. And why had I thrown my daughter into the passenger seat of my Mercedes and driven through a garage door without even buckling her seat belt? She was my most prized possession on earth. Would she remember that scene on the stairs for the rest of her life? Would she always visualize her mother crawling upward, trying to save her daughter from…from…what?…The coked-out maniac?
Somewhere over North Carolina I had admitted to myself that I was a coked-out maniac. For a brief moment, I had crossed over the line. But now I was back, sane, once more. Or was I?
I needed to keep snorting. And I needed to keep dropping, dropping Ludes and Xanax and lots of Valium. I needed to keep the paranoia at bay. I needed to maintain my high at all costs; to rest was to die…to rest was to die.
Twenty minutes later the seat-belt sign came on, serving as a clear reminder that it was time to stop snorting, time to drop Ludes and Xanax—to ensure that we’d hit the ground in a state of perfect toxic poise.
As my attorney had promised, Dave Beall was waiting on the tarmac with a black Lincoln limousine behind him. Janet at work, I figured, already hooking me up with transportation.
Standing there with his arms crossed, Dave looked bigger than a mountain. “You ready to party?” I said buoyantly. “I need to find my next ex-wife.”
“Let’s go back to my house and relax,” replied the Mountain. “Laurie flew to New York to be with Nadine. We got the whole house to ourselves. You need to get some sleep.”
Sleep? No, no, no! I thought. “I’ll get all the sleep I need when I’m dead, you big fuck. And whose side are you on, anyway? Mine or hers?” I took a swing at him, a full right cross that landed squarely on his right biceps.
He shrugged, apparently not feeling the sting of my blow. “I’m on your side,” he said warmly. “I’m always on your side, but I don’t think there’s a war. You guys are gonna make up. Give her a few days to calm down; that’s all the woman needs.”
I gritted my teeth and shook my head menacingly, as if to say, “Never! Not in a million f**king years!”
Alas, the truth was somewhat different. I wanted my Duchess back; in fact, I wanted her back desperately. But I couldn’t let Dave know that; he might slip, say something to Laurie, who would then say something to the Duchess. Then the Duchess would know that I was miserable without her, and that would give her the upper hand.
“I hope she drops f**king dead,” I muttered. “I mean, after what she did to me, Dave? I wouldn’t take her back if she were the last cunt in the world. Now, let’s go to Solid Gold and get some strippers to give us bl*w j*bs!”
“You’re the boss,” said Dave. “My orders are just to make sure that you don’t kill yourself.”
“Oh, really?” I snapped. “Who the f**k gave you those orders?”
“Everybody,” said my big friend, shaking his head gravely.
“Well, then, f**k everybody!” I sputtered, heading to the limousine. “Fuck every last one of them!”
Solid Gold—what a place! A smorgasbord of young strippers, at least two dozen of them. As we made our way toward the center stage, I got a better look at some of these young beauties, and I came to the sad conclusion that most of them had been beaten over the head with an ugly stick.
I turned to the Mountain and the Uniblinker and said, “There’re too many dogs in this place, but if we look hard enough I bet we can find a diamond in the rough.” I craned my head this way and that. “Let’s walk around a bit.”
Toward the back of the club was a VIP section. An enormous black bouncer stood before a short flight of steps cordoned off by a red velvet rope. I headed straight for him. “How ya doing!” I said, in warm tones.
The bouncer looked down at me as if I were an annoying insect that needed to be squashed. He needed a little attitude adjustment, I reasoned, so I reached down into my right sock, pulled out a stack of $10,000 in hundreds, and peeled off half and handed it to him.
With his attitude now properly adjusted, I said, “Would you bring me the five hottest girls in this place, and then clear out the VIP section for my friends and me?”
He smiled.
Five minutes later we had the entire VIP section to ourselves. There were four reasonably hot strippers standing in front of us in their birthday suits and high heels. They were all decent-looking, but none of them was marriage material. I needed a true beauty, one I could parade around Long Island to show the Duchess once and for all who was boss.
Just then the bouncer opened the velvet rope and a nak*d teenager made her way up the steps, in a pair of white patent-leather go-to-hell pumps. She sat down next to me on the arm of the club chair, crossed her bare legs with complete insouciance, and then leaned over and gave me a peck on the cheek. She smelled of a mixture of Angel perfume and a tiny drop of her own musky aroma from dancing. She was gorgeous. She couldn’t have been a day over eighteen. She had a great mane of light-brown hair, emerald-green eyes, a tiny button nose, and a smooth jaw-line. Her body was incredible—about five-five, a pair of silicone C-cups, a gentle curve to her tummy, and legs that rivaled the Duchess’s. She had olive skin, and there wasn’t a single blemish on it.