He nodded dutifully. OCD, however, was shaking his head suspiciously. “I don't know,” he said. “I really thought you two would stay together; I really did.”
“Yeah,” I replied glumly, “so did I. But there's just too much water under the bridge. Too many bad memories.”
It was a little after ten, and I was singing on Court Street again, albeit to a slightly smaller audience. The Witch, the Mormon, and my towering attorney, Magnum, were all conspicuously absent. The Witch, I was told, was busy with another case today, no doubt destroying some other poor schnook's life; the Mormon was busy attending to personal matters—probably still in bed with one of his Mormon wives, trying to conceive a fresh litter of Mormon babies; Magnum, on the other hand, was busy doing nothing. In fact, the only reason he wasn't here this morning—in the heinous subbasement of 26 Federal Plaza—was that he thought it would be good if I spent some “alone time” with my captors. And while his words seemed somewhat logical, they also seemed suspiciously convenient, considering I had just written him a check for a million dollars last week. (Why show up anymore when he could take the money and run?)
So it was just the three of us this morning: the Bastard, OCD, and myself.
“You're being quiet this morning,” said OCD. “If you don't want to talk about your personal life, it's okay.”
I shrugged. “What's there to say, other than that my wife must have been sleep-talking during our wedding vows?”
“You think maybe she's having an affair?”
“No, Greg! Not a chance,” I said confidently. Of course she is! I thought. She's f**king that dimwitted Brooklynite Michael Burrico. A dunce like him was an easy target for a prospecting Duchess. “She's definitely not cheating. What's going on with us cuts much deeper than that.”
He smiled warmly. “Don't take offense; I'm just trying to make sense of it all. Usually, when this sort of thing happens, there's another man waiting in the wings. But, hey, what do I know, right?”
Now the Bastard chimed in: “Like Greg, I'm also sympathetic to your plight, but the only thing you should be worried about now is your cooperation. Everything else is secondary.”
Yeah? What about my kids, a**hole?
“Joel's right,” said OCD. “It's probably not a good time to be getting divorced. Maybe you and Nadine should wait a bit, until all the commotion dies down.”
“All right,” snapped the Bastard, “so let's get down to cases, then. Last time we spoke, the market had just crashed and you were out of a job. What happened next?”
What an a**hole! I thought. I took a deep breath and said, “Well, I wouldn't actually say I was out of a job, because what I had at LF Rothschild wasn't really a job in the first place. I was a connector, which is the lowest of the low on Wall Street. All I did was dial the phone all day and try to get past the secretaries of wealthy business owners. It was a pride-swallowing siege—but one that I had no choice but to grin and bear. The only thing keeping me going was hope for the future.” I paused for effect. “And then came the crash.
“I still remember what it was like coming home that night on the express bus: You could've heard a pin drop. There was a certain fear in the air that I'd never experienced before. The media was sensationalizing things to the point of hysteria, predicting bank failures, massive unemployment, people jumping out of windows. It was the start of another Great Depression, they said.”
“A depression that never came,” added the Bastard, straight-A student of obvious history.
“Exactly,” I said. “It never came, although no one had any way of knowing that back then. Remember, the last time the market had crashed was in ‘29, and the depression came right on the heels of that. So it wasn't all that far-fetched to think it would happen again.” I paused for a moment. “Now, for people who'd actually grown up in the Great Depression—like my parents—the prospect was utterly terrifying, but for people like me, who'd only read about it in history books, it was simply unimaginable. So, whether you worked on Wall Street or Main Street that day, everyone was scared shitless what would happen next.” I shrugged my shoulders. “Everyone except Denise; she was as cool as a cucumber!”
“That's pretty impressive,” reasoned OCD, “considering how broke you two were.”
“Yeah,” I said quickly, “and it would have even been more impressive if she had the slightest idea the market had crashed.” I smiled ruefully.
The Bastard narrowed his eyes. “She hadn't heard it on the news?”
I shook my head slowly. “Denise never watched the news. She was more of a soap-opera girl than a news girl.” I paused for a moment, and a profound wave of sadness overtook me. Denise might have had her shortcomings, but she was still a great wife. And she was gorgeous, one of those dark-haired Italian beauties who every teenage boy fantasizes about in high school. She was a great wearer of black leather miniskirts and white cotton sweaters, the latter of which were softer than a baby's bottom.
Thinking back now, the way the two of us had cocooned ourselves in our tiny Bayside apartment had been pure magic. We had sworn eternal love for each other, certain that our love could conquer all. Yet, somehow, we'd managed to destroy that love. We allowed success and money to go to our heads. We allowed it to separate us, to eat away at us. Ultimately, it would turn her into a world-class shopaholic and me into a rip-roaring drug addict. And then came the Duchess—
“—still with us?” snapped the Bastard. “You need to take a break for a few minutes?” He offered me his sadistic warden's smile.
“No, I'm fine,” I said. “Anyway, Denise had no idea the market crashed, so the moment I walked through the door she threw her arms around me, as if I were a conquering hero. ‘Oh, my God!’ she said. ‘You're finally home! How was your first day as a stockbroker? Did you break the company record for the most stock sold?’”
OCD and the Bastard started chuckling.
I chuckled back. “Yeah—it was pretty funny, all right, except by mid-November we were down on our hands and knees, rolling up nickels, dimes, and quarters to pay for shampoo. But it wasn't until a month after the crash that I decided to throw in the towel and leave Wall Street.
“It was a Sunday morning, and Denise and I were sitting in the living room, like two zombies, looking through the help-wanted section. After a few minutes, I came across something that struck me as odd. ‘Check this out,’ I said to her. ‘There's a company advertising for stockbrokers, and they're not on Wall Street; they're on Long Island.’
“She looked at the ad and said, ‘What does PT, FT mean?’
“‘Part time, full time,’ I answered, and I found myself wondering what kind of brokerage firm hired part-time stockbrokers? I'd never heard of that before. Still, given my circumstances it seemed like a reasonable idea. So I said to her, ‘Working part-time might not be such a bad thing. Maybe I could earn a few bucks while I'm looking for something else,’ to which she nodded in agreement.
“Anyway, neither of us thought much of it at the time, and when I called the next morning, I was completely turned off. A gruff male voice answered the phone and said, ‘Investors’ Center. How can I helpya?’ and I knew right on the spot that it wasn't a switchboard operator. And the company's name sent shivers down my spine. I was used to names like Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch, names that resonated with Wall Street.
“I could only imagine myself saying, ‘Hi, this is Jordan Belfort, calling from the Investors’ Center in Butt-Fuck, Long Island. I'm no closer to Wall Street than you are, so why don't you send me your hard-earned money? You'll probably never see it again!’”
“Very prophetic,” snapped the Bastard.
“Yeah,” I agreed, “although the Investors’ Center wasn't in Butt-Fuck, Long Island; it was in Great Neck, Long Island, which is actually a pretty nice part of town. The company was on the second floor of a three-story office building.” I paused for a moment. “You know, I remember pulling up to the building and feeling rather impressed. I was driving Denise's old piece-a-shit Datsun, which was the only car we had at the time, and I was saying to myself, ‘Hey, this place doesn't look so bad!’ But then the moment I stepped into the boardroom my jaw dropped.
“The space was much smaller than I'd anticipated. It was maybe twenty feet square, and there wasn't a single thing about it that resonated of Wall Street. There were no computer monitors, no sales assistants, no stockbrokers pacing back and forth. There was nothing but twenty old wooden desks—all of them weathered-looking and arranged haphazardly. Only five of the desks had brokers behind them, and there was no pump whatsoever, just a low-level murmur.
“I'd worn a suit and tie to my interview, and I was the only one in the boardroom dressed that way. Everyone else was wearing jeans and sneakers, with the exception of one guy. The only problem was that his suit looked like it came straight out of a Salvation Army box. To this day, in fact, the guy still sticks out in my mind, because of his dim-witted expression. He looked lobotomized. He was in his early thirties, and he had the greasiest black hair imaginable—as if he showered in motor oil and—”
The Bastard began nodding his head again, as if to say, “Move on.”
“Well, whatever,” I said. “The manager was sitting in a small office at the front of the boardroom, and he seemed oblivious to everything. He was yapping away on his phone, talking to his wife, I recall, and saying something about their dog being sick. When he saw me, he held up an index finger, to which I nodded dutifully. Then he kept on talking.
“His name, as it turned out, was George Grunfeld, and two years prior he'd been a social-studies teacher. He was in his mid-to-late forties, and he happened to be the spitting image of Gabe Kaplan, the teacher from Welcome Back, Kotter.” I smiled at OCD. “Remember Welcome Back, Kotter, Greg?”
OCD nodded. “Yeah, with Travolta.” He looked at the Bastard. “You ever watch Welcome Back, Kotter?“
The Bastard flashed OCD a dead smile. “Yeah; up your nose with a rubber hose,” he said tonelessly.
“Ah, there you go!” I said warmly. “That's exactly what Travolta used to say to Mr. Kotter.” I smiled at my new friend, pleased that I was finally able to find some common ground with him. Alas, he refused to smile back. Instead, he stared at me, stone-faced.
I shrugged. “Well, anyway, he looked just like him, bushy everywhere—his hair, eyebrows, mustache, knuckles. It looked like someone had glued a bunch of tumbleweeds to the guy!”
OCD shook his head, amused, while the Bastard stared ominously.
“Anyway, George finally hung up the phone and came over to greet me. ‘Just pick a free desk and start dialing,’ he said after a few seconds of small talk.
“ ‘That's it?’ I said. ‘You're hiring me?’
“ ‘Yeah, why not? It's not like I'll be paying you a salary or anything. That's not a problem, is it?’ I was about to tell him that it wasn't, when one of the salesmen suddenly popped out of his chair and started pacing back and forth. George motioned toward the guy and said, ‘That's Chris Knight; he's our top salesman. He's got a helluva rap. Listen…’
“I nodded and focused my attention on Chris, who was tall and lanky and had a face longer than a thoroughbred's. He was no older than twenty, and he was dressed like he'd just strolled in from a keg party. I remember being appalled at how terrible he sounded. He was mumbling, slurring; I could hardly understand the guy! Then, out of nowhere, he started screaming into his telephone, in short rapid-fire bursts of ludicrous sales hype. ‘Jesus Christ—Bill—I guarantee it!’ he screamed. ‘I guarantee this stock is going up! You can't lose here—it's impossible! I have information-it's not even public yet—do you hear me? I don't think you do, because I have inside information!’ And then he yanked the phone away from his ear and held it out in front of his own nose and stared at the receiver with contempt. Then, after five seconds of staring, he put the phone back to his ear and started screaming again. I looked at George and said, ‘What the hell was that all about?’ and George nodded his head knowingly and said, ‘He's pretty good, isn't he?’ And I just shook my head in disbelief and said nothing. Meanwhile, Chris was still screaming, ‘Don't you understand? We can't lose here, Bill! I promise you! The stock is going to the moon! No ifs, ands, or buts! You gotta buy it now-right now!’”
I shrugged and said, “During my six months at LF Rothschild, I never heard anything so ridiculous, and I'm not just talking about all the securities laws he was violating but also his complete lack of professionalism. All this screaming and shouting and ridiculous sales hype was so Mickey Mouse-ish that no one with even the slightest bit of financial sophistication would give this guy the time of day.”
The Bastard held up his hand. “Let me get this straight,” he said skeptically. “You're saying you're not a proponent of sales hype?”
I turned the corners of my mouth down and shook my head. “No, I'm not, actually. Selling through hype is a complete waste of time. In military terms, it's like carpet bombing. It's very loud and menacing, but it's only marginally effective. At Stratton, I taught a different style of selling, which was the equivalent of dropping laser-guided smart bombs on high-priority targets.” I shrugged. “Let me take things in order and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about.”
The Bastard nodded slowly.
“All right,” I said. “So as awful a salesman as Chris Knight was— or, should I say, as untrained a salesman as he was—it was what came out of his mouth next that truly shocked me. ‘Oh—come on!’ he screamed at his client. ‘The stock's only thirty cents a share. Pick up a thousand shares, that's all I'm asking! It's only a three-hundred-dollar investment; how could you go wrong?’
“With that, I turned to George and said, ‘Did he just say thirty cents a share?’ And George said, ‘Yeah. Why?’
“ ‘Well, it's just that I've never heard of stocks that cheap. I was trained at a Big Board firm—meaning we sold mostly New York Stock Exchange stocks. And even then, the stuff we did on NAS-DAQ was in the fifteen-to-twenty-dollar range.’
“Meanwhile, Chris was busy slamming down his phone in anger. Then he started muttering: ‘That motherfucker hung up on me! What a rat bastard!’ So George looks at me and says, ‘No worries, he'll get the next one. But either way, you should sit next to him for a few days, so he can show you the ropes.’
“Well, I was about to break out into outright laughter, but then George added, ‘He did make over ten grand last month. How much did you make?’
“I looked at George in disbelief, wondering how a moron like Chris Knight could make ten thousand dollars in a month; then something very odd occurred to me. ‘Wait a second,’ I said to him. ‘How the hell did he make ten thousand dollars working on three-hundred-dollar trades?’ Then I explained to George how a three-hundred-dollar trade at LF Rothschild would yield a commission of between three and six dollars—depending on how aggressive you wanted to get with the client. And sometimes the commissions were even lower than that, I added, especially on tickets of a half million or more.
“So George waved me into his office to offer me a visual explanation. He grabbed a sheet of paper off his desk and said, ‘These are the only stocks you'll be recommending here. There are six of them.’ He handed me the sheet of paper, and I took a moment to study it. ‘KBF Pollution Control?’ I muttered to myself. ‘Arncliffe National?’ I was about to say, ‘I've never heard of any of these stocks,’ when George pointed to a column of numbers and said, ‘These are the bids for the stocks,’ and I saw that they were all under a dollar. I was about to say, ‘These must be real pieces of shit if they're all under a dollar,’ when he pointed to another column of numbers and said, ‘And these are the offers. Everything in between is your commission.’”
I paused for a moment to let my words sink in. Then I smiled and said, “You might find this hard to believe, given my current level of sophistication, but back then I didn't understand the difference between the bid and the offer. I mean, I knew you sold at the bid and bought at the offer, but I'd never really considered what happened to the money in between.
“You see, with big stocks the difference between the two is small, maybe half a percent, and only occasionally do the brokers get a sliver of it; usually it's glommed up by traders. In fact, at Rothschild, the brokers would go absolutely wild when a block of stock came with a spread in it. They would call their clients and bang them over the head, because they were making double commission.
“But at the Investors’ Center, I couldn't believe my eyes. The spreads were enormous—at least fifty percent or better. I said to George, ‘How could the bid for Arncliffe National be twenty-five cents and the offer be fifty cents? My commission can't really be a quarter a share, can it ?’ to which he replied, ‘Sure, why not?’
“I said, ‘Well, let's just suppose a client purchases a quarter million dollars of Arncliffe National’—that was an average trade at LF Rothschild—‘Would my commission really be $125,000?’ I asked.
“ ‘Yeah, in theory,’ he answered, ‘but it doesn't really work that way, because no one puts that kind of money into penny stocks.’
“ ‘Why not?’ I asked.
“ ‘Well…’ he replied, not that confidently, ‘we… uh… we don't call people who have that kind of money. We call working-class people.’
“ ‘Really?’ I said. ‘Why call people who don't have money to invest in the stock market? It seems illogical.’
“ ‘Yeah, maybe so,’ he replied, ‘but rich people don't buy penny stocks.’
“ ‘Why not?’ I asked for the second time, to which he started hemming and hawing. He really had no answer other than telling me just to trust him, which I did. In retrospect, I think I was too beaten down to argue, because under normal circumstances I would have debated him until I was blue in the face. In any case, I decided to take his words as gospel and go along with the program. I took a seat next to Chris Knight and then wrote a script for a cosmetics company called Arncliffe International.”