PROLOGUE
CROCODILE TEARS
September 2, 1998
ou'd think that anyone who was facing thirty years in jail and a hundred-million-dollar fine would be ready to settle down and play things straight. But, no, I must be some sort of glutton for punishment, or maybe I'm just my own worst enemy.
Whatever the case, I'm the Wolf of Wall Street. Remember me? The investment banker who partied like a rock star, the one whose life was sheer insanity? The one with the choirboy face, the innocent smile, and the recreational drug habit that could sedate Guatemala? You remember. I wanted to be young and rich, so I hopped on the Long Island Railroad and headed down to Wall Street to seek my fortune—only to come up with a brainstorm that inspired me to bring my own version of Wall Street out to Long Island instead.
And what a brainstorm it was! By my twenty-seventh birthday, I had built one of the largest brokerage firms in America. It was a place where the young and the uneducated would come to get rich beyond their wildest dreams.
My firm's name was Stratton Oakmont, although, in retrospect, it should have been Sodom and Gomorrah. After all, it wasn't every firm that sported hookers in the basement, drug dealers in the parking lot, exotic animals in the boardroom, and midget-tossing competitions on Fridays.
In my mid-thirties, I had all the trappings of extreme Wall Street wealth—mansions, yachts, private jets, helicopters, limos, armed bodyguards, throngs of domestic servants, drug dealers on speed dial, hookers who took credit cards, police looking for handouts, politicians on the payroll, enough exotic cars to open my own exotic-car dealership—and a loyal and loving blond second wife named Nadine.
Actually, you may have seen Nadine on TV in the 1990s; she was that wildly sexy blonde who tried to sell you Miller Lite Beer during Monday Night Football. She had the face of an angel, although it was her legs and ass that got her the job; well, that and her perky young br**sts, which she had recently augmented to a C-cup, after giving birth to the second of our two children. A son!
Nadine and I were living what I had come to think of as Lifestyles of the Rich and Dysfunctional—a sexed-up, drugged-up, hyped-up, over-the-top version of the American Dream. We were careening down the fast lane, at 200 miles per hour, with one fingertip on the steering wheel, never signaling, and never looking back. (Who would want to?) The wreckage of the past was astonishing. It was far too painful to look back; it was much easier just to plunge forward and keep speeding down the road, praying that the past wouldn't catch up with us. But, of course, it did.
In fact, I was teetering on the brink of disaster after a small army of FBI agents raided my Long Island estate and led me away in handcuffs. It had happened on a warm Tuesday evening, the week before Labor Day, less than two months after my thirty-sixth birthday. And when the arresting agent said to me, “Jordan Belfort, you've been indicted on twenty-two counts of securities fraud, stock manipulation, money laundering, and obstruction of justice …” I had pretty much tuned out. After all, what was the point of hearing a list of the crimes I knew I'd committed? It would be like taking a sniff from a milk container labeled spoiled milk.
So I called my lawyer and resigned myself to spending the night in jail. And as they led me away in handcuffs, my only solace was getting to say one last good-bye to my loving second wife. She was standing in the doorway with tears in her eyes and wearing cutoff jean shorts. She looked gorgeous, even on the night of my arrest.
As they escorted me past her, I stiffened my upper lip and whispered, “Don't worry, sweetie. Everything will be okay,” to which she nodded sadly and whispered back, “I know, baby. Stay strong for me, and stay strong for the kids. We all love you.” She blew me a tender kiss and snuffled back a tear.
And then I was gone.
BOOK I
CHAPTER 1
THE AFTERMATH
September 4, 1998
oel Cohen, the disheveled assistant United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York, was a world-class bastard with a degenerate slouch. When I was arraigned the following day, he tried to convince the female magistrate to deny me bail on the grounds that I was a born liar, a compulsive cheater, a habitual whoremonger, a hopeless drug addict, a serial witness-tamperer, and, above all things, the greatest flight risk since Amelia Earhart.
It was a helluva mouthful, although the only things that bothered me were that he had called me a drug addict and a whoremonger. After all, I had been sober for almost eighteen months now, and I had sworn off hookers accordingly. Whatever the case, the magistrate set my bail at $10 million, and within twenty-four hours my wife and my attorney had made all the necessary arrangements for my release.
At this particular moment, I was walking down the courthouse steps into the loving arms of my wife. It was a sunny Friday afternoon, and she was waiting for me on the sidewalk, wearing a tiny yellow sundress and matching high-heeled sandals that made her look as fresh as a daisy. At this time of summer, in this part of Brooklyn, by four o'clock the sun was at just the right angle to bring every last drop of her into view: her shimmering blond hair, those brilliant blue eyes, her perfect cover-girl features, those surgically enhanced br**sts, her glorious shanks and flanks, so succulent above the knee and so slender at the ankle. She was thirty years old now and absolutely gorgeous. The moment I reached her, I literally fell into her arms.
“You're a sight for sore eyes,” I said, embracing her on the sidewalk. “I missed you so much, honey.”
“Get the f**k away from me!” she sputtered. “I want a divorce.”
I felt a second-wife alarm go off in my central nervous system. “What are you talking about, honey? You're being ridiculous!”
“You know exactly what I'm talking about!” And she recoiled from my embrace and started marching toward a blue Lincoln limousine parked at the edge of the curb of 225 Cadman Plaza, the main thoroughfare in the courthouse section of Brooklyn Heights. Waiting by the limo's rear door was Monsoir, our babbling Pakistani driver. He opened it on cue, and I watched her disappear into a sea of sumptuous black leather and burled walnut, taking her tiny yellow sundress and shimmering blond hair with her.
I wanted to follow, but I was too stunned. My feet seemed to be rooted into the earth, as if I were a tree. Beyond the limousine, on the other side of the street, I could see a dreary little park adorned with green-slat benches, undernourished trees, and a small field covered by a thin layer of dirt and crabgrass. The park looked as sumptuous as a graveyard. My misery made my eye hang on it for a moment.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Christ, I needed to grab hold of myself! I looked at my watch… didn't have one… I had taken it off before they slapped the cuffs on me. Suddenly I felt terribly conscious of my appearance. I looked down at my abdomen. I was one giant wrinkle, from my tan golf pants to my white silk polo shirt to my leather boating moccasins. I hadn't slept in how many days? Three? Four? Hard to say—I never slept much anyway. My blue eyes burned like hot coals. My mouth was dry as a bone. My breath was—wait a minute! Was it my breath? Maybe I scared her off! After three days of eating grade-D bratwurst I had the worst case of dragon breath since—didn't know when. But, still, how could she leave me now? What kind of woman was she? That bitch! Gold-digger—
These thoughts roaring through my head were completely crazy. My wife wasn't going anywhere. She was just shell-shocked. Besides, it was common knowledge that second wives didn't bail on their husbands the moment they got indicted; they waited a bit so it wasn't so obvious! It couldn't be possible—
—just then I saw Monsoir smiling at me and nodding his head.
Fucking terrorist! I thought.
Monsoir had been working for us for almost six months now, and the jury was still out on him. He was one of those unnerving foreigners who wore a perpetual grin on his face. In Monsoir's case, I figured it was because his next stop was to a local bomb factory, to mix explosives. Either way, he was thin, balding, caramel-colored, medium height, and had a narrow skull shaped like a shoe box. When he spoke, he sounded like the Road Runner, his words coming out in tiny beeps and bops. And unlike my old driver, George, Monsoir couldn't shut up.
I walked to the limousine in a zombielike state, making a mental note to thrash him if he tried to make small talk. And my wife, well, I would just have to humor her. And if that didn't work, then I would start a fight with her. After all, ours was the sort of wildly rocky, dysfunctional romance where knock-down, drag-out brawls brought us closer together.
“How are you, boss?” asked Monsoir. “It is berry, berry good to have you back. What was it like inside the—”
I cut him off with a raised palm: “Don't—f**king—speak, Monsoir. Not now. Not ever,” and I climbed into the back of the limousine and took a seat across from Nadine. She was sitting with her long, bare legs crossed, staring out the window into the rancid gullet of Brooklyn.
I smiled and said, “Taking in your old stomping ground, Duchess?”
No response. She just stared out the window, a gorgeous ice sculpture.
Christ—this was absurd! How could the Duchess of Bay Ridge turn her back on me in my hour of need? The Duchess of Bay Ridge was my wife's nickname, and depending on her mood it could cause her to either flash you a smile or tell you to go f**k yourself. The nickname had to do with her blond hair, British citizenship, over-the-top beauty, and Brooklyn upbringing. Her British citizenship, which she was very quick to remind you of, created a rather royal and refined mystique about her; the Brooklyn upbringing, in the gloomy groin of Bay Ridge, caused words like shit, prick, cocksucker, and motherfucker to roll off her tongue like the finest poetry; and the extreme beauty allowed her to get away with it all. At five-seven, the Duchess and I were pretty much the same size, although she had the temper of Mount Vesuvius and the strength of a grizzly bear. Back in my younger and wilder days, she was pretty quick to take a swing at me or pour boiling water over my head, when the need arose. And, as odd as it seemed, I loved it.
I took a deep breath and said in a joking tone, “Come on, Duchess! I'm very upset right now and I need a bit of compassion. Please?”
Now she looked at me. Her blue eyes blazed away above her high cheekbones. “Don't f**king call me that,” she snarled, and then she looked back out the window, resuming her ice-sculpture pose.
“Jesus Christ!” I muttered. “What the hell has gotten into you?”
Still looking out the window, she said, “I can't be with you anymore. I'm not in love with you.” Then, twisting the knife in deeper: “I haven't been for a long time.”
Such despicable words! The audacity! Yet for some reason her words made me want her even more. “You're being ridiculous, Nae. Everything will be fine.” My throat was so dry I could barely get the words out. “We've got more than enough money, so you can relax. Please don't do this now.”
Still staring out the window: “It's too late.”
As the limousine headed toward the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, a combination of fear, love, desperation, and betrayal overtook me all at once. There was a sense of loss that I had never experienced before. I felt completely empty, utterly hollow. I couldn't just sit across from her like this—it was absolute torture! I needed to either kiss her or hug her or make love to her or strangle her to death. It was time for strategy number two: the knock-down, drag-out brawl.
With a healthy dose of venom, I said, “So let me get this f**king straight, Nadine: Now you want a divorce? Now that I'm under f**king indictment? Now that I'm under house arrest?” I pulled up the left leg of my pants, exposing an electronic monitoring bracelet on my ankle. It looked like a beeper. “What kind of f**king person are you? Tell me! Are you trying to set a world record for lack of compassion?”
She looked at me with dead eyes. “I'm a good woman, Jordan; everyone knows that. But you mistreated me for years. I've been done with this marriage for a long time now—ever since you kicked me down the stairs. This has nothing to do with you going to jail.”
What a bunch of horseshit! Yes, I had raised a hand to her once— that terrible struggle on the stairs, eighteen months ago, that despicable moment, the day before I got sober—and if she had left me then, she would have been justified. But she didn't leave; she stayed; and I did get sober. It was only now—with financial ruin lingering in the air—that she wanted out. Unbelievable!
By now we were on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, approaching the Brooklyn-Queens border. Off to my left was the glittering island of Manhattan, where seven million people would dance and sing their weekend away, unconcerned with my plight. I found that wholly depressing. Off to my immediate left was the armpit of Williamsburg, a flat swath of land loaded with dilapidated warehouses, ramshackle apartments, and people who spoke Polish. Just why all those Poles had settled there, I hadn't the slightest idea.
Ahhh, a brainstorm! I would change the subject to the kids. This, after all, was the common bond we shared. “Are the kids okay?” I asked softly.
“They're fine,” she answered, in a rather cheery tone. Then: “They'll be fine no matter what.” She stared out the window again. The unspoken message was: “Even if you go to jail for a hundred years, Chandler and Carter will still be okay, because Mommy will find a new husband faster than you can say Sugar Daddy!”
I took a deep breath and decided to say no more; there was no winning with her right now. If only I had stuck with my first wife! Would Denise be saying now that she didn't love me anymore? Fucking second wives; they were a mixed bag, especially those of the trophy variety. For better or worse? Yeah, right! They only said that for the sake of the wedding video. In reality, they were only there for the better.
This was payback for leaving my kind first wife, Denise, for the blond-headed scoundrel seated across from me. The Duchess had been my mistress once, an innocent fling that spiraled way out of control. Before I knew it, we were madly in love and couldn't live without each other, couldn't breathe without each other. Of course, I had rationalized my actions at the time—telling myself that Wall Street was a very tough place for first wives, so it wasn't really my fault. After all, when a man became a true power broker, these things were expected to happen.
These things, however, cut both ways—because if the Master of the Universe took a financial nosedive, then the second wife would quickly move on to more-fertile pastures. In essence, the gold digger, aware that the gold mine had ceased to yield the precious ore, would move on to a more productive mine, where she could continue to extract ore, undisturbed. Indeed, it was one of life's most ruthless equations, and right now I was on the ass end of it.
With a sinking heart, I shifted my gaze back to the Duchess. She was still staring out the window—a beautiful, malevolent ice sculpture. At that moment I felt many things for her, but mostly I felt sad—sad for both of us, and even sadder for our children. Up until now they had lived a charmed life in Old Brookville, secure in the fact that things were just as they should be and that they would always stay that way. How very sad, I thought, how very f**king sad.
We spent the remainder of the limo ride in silence.
CHAPTER 2
THE INNOCENT VICTIMS
he village of Old Brookville stands on the sparkling “Gold Coast” of Long Island, an area so magnificent that up until a short time ago it had been strictly off-limits to Jews. Not literally, of course, but for all practical purposes we were still considered second-class citizens, a clique of slippery peddlers who'd risen above their station and needed to be observed and controlled lest they overrun the area's first-class citizens—namely, the WASPs.
Actually, these weren't just any old WASPs but a small subspecies of WASP known as “the blue blood.” Numbering only in the thousands, the blue bloods, with their tall, thin frames and fancy clothes, had natural habitats that included world-class golf courses, stately mansions, hunting and fishing lodges, and secret societies. Most of them were of British stock, and they took great pride in tracing their genealogies back to the time of the Mayflower. Yet, in evolutionary terms, they were no different from the massive dinosaurs that had ruled the Gold Coast 65 million years before them: They were on the verge of extinction—victims of increased death taxes, property taxes, and a steady dilution of the intellectual gene pool, as generations of inbreeding yielded idiot sons and daughters who wreaked financial havoc on the great fortunes their blue-blooded ancestors had taken generations to build. (The magic of Charles Darwin working overtime.)
In any event, this was where the Duchess and I now lived and where I had assumed we would grow old together. Now, however, as the limousine pulled through the limestone pillars at the edge of our six-acre estate, I wondered.
A long circular driveway, bordered by immaculately trimmed box hedges, led to our ten-thousand-square-foot stone mansion finished in French chateau style, with gleaming copper turrets and casement windows. At the end of the driveway, a long cobblestone walkway led to the mansion's twelve-foot-high mahogany front door. As the limo pulled up to it, I decided to take one last shot with the Duchess before we went inside. I got down on my knees and placed my hands on either side of her thighs, which were crossed. As always, her skin felt silky smooth, although I resisted the urge to run my hands down the full length of her bare legs. Instead, I looked up at her with puppy-dog eyes and said:
“Listen, Nae, I know this has been tough on you”—tough on you?—“and I'm really sorry for that, but we've been together for eight years, sweetie. And we have two amazing kids! We'll get through this.” I paused for a moment and nodded my head for effect. “And even if I do go to jail, you and the kids will always be taken care of. I promise you.”
“Don't worry about us,” she said coldly. “Just worry about yourself.”
I narrowed my eyes and said, “I don't get it, Nadine. You make it seem like you're totally shocked about all this. When we first met it wasn't like I was being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. I was being smeared and vilified by every newspaper in the free world!” I cocked my head to the side, at an angle that implied logic, and continued: “I mean, I guess it would be one thing if you married a doctor and then found out, after the fact, that he'd been defrauding Medicaid for the last twenty years. I guess then you would be justified! But, now, given the circumstances—”
She cut me right off. “I had no idea what you were doing”—oh, I guess the two million in cash in my sock drawer never made you suspicious!—”none at all. And after they took you away, that Agent Coleman interrogated me for five hours—five f**king hours!” The last three words she screamed, and then she pushed my hands off her thighs. “He told me that I would go to jail too, unless I told him everything! You put me at risk; you put me in danger. I'll never forgive you for that.” She looked away, shaking her head in disgust.