Oh, shit! Agent Coleman had traumatized her. Of course, he had been totally full of shit, but, still, she was holding me responsible. Yet perhaps that boded well for our future together. After all, once the Duchess realized that she wasn't at risk, she might have a change of heart. I was about to explain that to her, when she turned back to me and said, “I need to get away for a while. The last few days have been stressful on me, and I need to be alone. I'm going to the beach house for the weekend. I'll be back on Monday.”
I opened my mouth, but no words came out, just a tiny gasp of air. Finally I said, “You're leaving me alone with the kids under house arrest?”
“Yes!” she said proudly, and she opened the rear door and popped out of her seat in a huff. And just like that she was gone-marching toward the mansion's massive front door, with the hem of her tiny yellow sundress rising and falling with each determined step. I stared at the Duchess's fabulous behind for a moment. Then I jumped out of the limousine and followed her into the house.
On the mansion's second floor, three large bedrooms were on the east end of a very long hallway, and a fourth bedroom, the master bedroom, was on the west end. Of the three east bedrooms, our children occupied two, and the third was used as a guest room. A four-foot-wide mahogany staircase swept up in a sumptuous curve from a grand marble entryway below. When I reached the top of the stairs, rather than following the Duchess into the master bedroom, I turned east and headed for the kids’ rooms. I found them both in Chandler's room, sitting on her glorious pink carpet. They were dressed in their pajamas, playing happily. The room was a little pink wonderland, with dozens of stuffed animals arranged just so. The drapes, the window treatments, and the goose-down comforter on Chandler's queen-size bed were all done in “Laura Ashley style,” a palette of mellow pastels and floral prints. It was the perfect little girl's room, for my perfect little girl.
Chandler had just turned five, and she was the spitting image of her mother, a tiny blond model. At this particular moment, she was engaged in her favorite pastime—arranging a hundred fifty Barbie dolls into a perfect circle around her, so she could sit in the center and hold court. Carter, who had just turned three, was lying on his stomach just outside the circle. He was thumbing through a picture book with his right hand, his left elbow resting on the carpet and his tiny chin resting in his palm. His enormous blue eyes blazed away behind eyelashes as lush as butterfly wings. His platinum-blond hair was as fine as corn silk and had tiny curls on the back that shimmered like polished glass.
The moment they saw me they jumped up and ran toward me. “Daddy's home!” screamed Chandler. Then Carter chimed in: “Daddy! Daddy!”
I crouched down and they ran into my arms.
“I missed you guys so much!” I said, showering them with kisses. “I think you got even bigger in the last three days! Let me look at you.” I held them out in front of me, and I cocked my head to the side and narrowed my eyes suspiciously, as if I were inspecting them.
They both stood tall and proud, shoulder to shoulder, their chins slightly elevated. Chandler was big for her age, Carter small, so she was a good head and a half taller than him. I compressed my lips and nodded my head gravely, as if to say, “My suspicions were confirmed!” Then I said accusingly: “I was right! You did get bigger! Why, you little sneaks!”
They both giggled deliciously. Then Chandler said, “Why are you crying, Daddy? Do you have a boo-boo?”
Without me even knowing it, a trickle of tears had made their way down my cheeks. I dried them with the back of my hand and then offered my daughter a harmless white lie: “No, I don't have a boo-boo, silly! I'm just so happy to see you guys, it made me cry tears of joy.”
Carter nodded in agreement, although he was quickly losing interest. He was a boy, after all, so his attention span was limited. In fact, Carter lived for only five things: sleeping, eating, watching his Lion King video, climbing on the furniture, and the sight of the Duchess's long blond hair, which soothed him like a ten-milligram Valium. Carter was a man of few words, yet he was remarkably intelligent. By his first birthday he could work the TV, VHS, and remote control. By eighteen months he was a master locksmith, picking Tot Loks with the precision of a safecracker. And by two years old he had memorized two dozen picture books. He was calm, cool, and collected, entirely comfortable in his own skin.
Chandler, on the other hand, was the exact opposite. She was complex, curious, intuitive, introspective, and never at a loss for words. Her nickname was the CIA, because she was constantly eavesdropping on conversations, trying to gather intelligence. She had spoken her first word at seven months, and at the age of one, she was speaking full sentences. At two, she was having full-blown arguments with the Duchess, and she hadn't stopped since. She was difficult to cajole, impossible to manipulate, and had an unusually keen sense for seeing through bullshit.
And that created problems for me. My ankle bracelet could be explained away as some sort of advanced medical device, something that the doctor had given me to make sure my back pain never returned. I would tell Chandler that it was a six-month therapy regimen, and I was to keep the bracelet on at all times. She would probably buy that for a while. However, being under house arrest was going to be much more difficult to conceal.
As a family, we were constantly on the move—running and doing and going and seeing—so what would Chandler think about my sudden compulsion to not leave the house? I ran it through my mind and came to the quick conclusion that, in spite of everything, the Duchess could still be counted on to cover for me.
Then Chandler said, “Are you crying because you had to pay people back money?”
“Whuh?” I muttered. That dirty little Duchess! I thought. How could she! Why would she? To try to poison Chandler against me! She was waging a psychological war, and this was her first salvo. Step one: Let the children know Daddy's a big fat crook; step two: Let the children know there are other, better men, who aren't big fat crooks, who will take care of Mommy; step three: The moment Daddy goes to jail, tell the children Daddy abandoned them because he doesn't love them; and, finally, step four: Tell the children that it would be appropriate to call Mommy's new husband Daddy, until his gold mine dries up, at which point Mommy will find an even newer daddy for them.
I took a deep breath and conjured up another white lie. I said to Chandler, “I think you misunderstood, sweetie. I was busy working.”
“No,” argued Chandler, frustrated at my denseness. “Mommy said you took money from people and now you have to pay it back.”
I shook my head in disbelief and then took a moment to regard Carter. He seemed to be eyeing me suspiciously. Christ—did he know too? He was only three, and all he cared about was the f**king Lion King!
I had a lot of explaining to do, and not just today but also in the days and years to come. Chandler would be reading soon, and that would open up a whole new can of worms. What would I say to her? What would her friends say to her? I felt a fresh wave of despair wash over me. In a way, the Duchess was right. I had to pay for my crimes, although on Wall Street everyone was a criminal, wasn't that true? It was only a question of degree, wasn't it? So what made me worse than anybody else—the fact that I'd gotten caught?
I chose not to follow that train of thought. Changing the subject, I said, “Well, it's really not important, Channy. Let's play with your Barbie dolls.” And after you go to sleep, I thought, Daddy is going to head downstairs to his study and spend a few hours figuring out a way to kill Mommy without getting caught.
CHAPTER 3
EVAPORATING OPTIONS
e were somewhere on the Grand Central Parkway near the Queens-Manhattan border when I finally lost patience with Monsoir.
It was Tuesday morning, the day after Labor Day, and I was on my way to my criminal attorney's office in Midtown Manhattan with my electronic monitoring bracelet on my left ankle and this babbling Pakistani behind the wheel. Yet, despite those hindrances, I was still dressed for success, in a gray pinstripe suit, crisp white dress shirt, red shepherd's check necktie, black cotton dress socks—which, on my left ankle, concealed the electronic monitoring bracelet—and a pair of black Gucci loafers with tassels on them.
Dressing for success; that had seemed important this morning, although I was certain that even if I wore a diaper and a bow tie, my trusted criminal attorney, Gregory J. O'Connell, would still tell me that I looked like a million bucks. After all, this morning's first order of business would be to hand him a check in that very amount: one million bucks. That was a priority, he'd explained, because there was a better than fifty-fifty chance that the U.S. Attorney's Office would be making a motion to freeze my assets this week. And lawyers, of course, need to get paid.
It was a little after ten a.m., and the morning rush hour had just ended. Off to my right I could see the low-slung hangars and terminals of LaGuardia Airport, looking as grimy as usual. Off to my left I could see the burgeoning Greek paradise of Astoria, Queens, which had a higher concentration of Greeks per square foot than anyplace on earth, including Athens. I had grown up not far from here, in the Jew paradise of Bayside, Queens, a neighborhood of safe streets that was now in the process of being overrun by well-heeled Koreans.
We had left Old Brookville thirty minutes ago, and, since then, the closet terrorist hadn't kept his mouth shut. He'd been going on and on about the criminal justice system in his beloved Pakistan. On most days I would have simply told him to shut the f**k up. But on this particular morning I was too worn out to throttle him. And that was the Duchess's fault.
True to her word, the blond-headed scoundrel had flown the coop on me that weekend, spending three days and nights in the Hamptons. I was pretty sure she had crashed at our beach house at nighttime, but I hadn't the slightest idea what she had done during the day and, for that matter, whom she had done it with. She didn't call once, painting a clear picture that she was busy! busy! busy! prospecting for a new gold mine.
When she finally walked in the door, Monday afternoon, she said only a few words to me—something about the traffic being brutal on her way back from the Hamptons. Then she went upstairs to the kids’ rooms, smiling and laughing, and took them outside to the swings. She didn't seem to have a care in the world—making it a point, in fact, to amplify her cheeriness, ad nauseam.
She pushed them at an overly merry clip and then took her shoes off and went skipping around the backyard with them. It was as if our two lives no longer intertwined in any way whatsoever. Her very callousness had sent my spirits plunging to even lower depths. I felt as if I were in a dark hole, suffocating, with no escape.
I hadn't eaten, slept, laughed, or smiled in almost four days now, and, at this particular moment, with Monsoir's inane ramblings, I was contemplating slitting my own wrists.
Now he started speaking again. “I was only trying to cheer you up, boss. You are actually a berry lucky man. In my country they cut your hand off if they catch you stealing a loaf of bread.”
I cut him off. “Yeah, well, that's real f**king fascinating, Monsoir. Thanks for sharing.” And I took a moment to consider the pros and cons of Islamic justice. I came to the quick conclusion that, given my current circumstances, it would be a mixed bag for me. On the plus side, the Duchess wouldn't be acting so tough if I could force her to wear one of those head-to-toe burkas around town; it would stop that blond head of hers from sticking out like a f**king peacock. Yet, on the minus side, the Islamic penalty for white-collar crime and serial whoremongering had to be pretty severe. My kids and I had recently watched Aladdin, and they were ready to cut the poor kid's hand off for stealing a ten-cent grapefruit. Or was it a loaf of bread? Either way, I had stolen over a hundred million bucks, and I could only imagine what the Islamic penalty was for that.
Although, had I really stolen anything? I mean, this word stolen was somewhat of a mischaracterization, wasn't it? On Wall Street we weren't actually thieves, were we? We simply talked people out of their money; we didn't actually steal it from them! There was a difference. The crimes we committed were soft crimes—like churning and burning, and trading on inside information, and garden-variety tax evasion. They were technical violations more than anything; it wasn't blatant thievery.
Or was it? Well, maybe it was… maybe it was. Perhaps I had taken things to a new level. Or at least the newspapers thought so.
By now the limousine was making its way over the great arc of the Triborough Bridge, and I could see the gleaming skyline of Manhattan off to my left. On clear days, like today, the buildings seemed to rise up to heaven. You could literally feel the weight of them. There was no doubt that Manhattan was the center of the financial universe, a place where movers and shakers could move and shake, where Masters of the Universe could congregate like Greek gods. And every last one of them was as crooked as me!
Yes, I thought, I was no different than any other man who owned a brokerage firm—from the blue-blooded WASP bastard who ran JPMorgan to the hapless white-bread schnook who ran Butt-Fuck Securities (in Butt-Fuck, Minnesota), we all cut a few corners. We had to, after all, if nothing more than to stay even with the competition. Such was the nature of contemporary perfection on Wall Street if you wanted to be a true power broker.
So, in reality, none of this was my fault. It was Joe Kennedy's fault! Yes, he had started this terrible wave of stock manipulation and corporate chicanery. Back in the thirties, Old Joe had been the original Wolf of Wall Street, slashing and burning anyone in his path. In fact, he'd been one of the chief instigators of the Great Crash of ‘29, which plunged the United States into the Great Depression. He and a small handful of fabulously Wealthy Wolves had taken advantage of an unsuspecting public—making tens of millions of dollars short-selling stocks that were already on the verge of collapse, causing them to plummet that much lower.
And what had his punishment been? Well, unless I was a bit off on my history, he became the first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The audacity! Yes, the stock market's chief crook had become its chief watchdog. And all the while, even as he served as chairman, he continued to slash and burn from behind the scenes, making millions more.
I was no different from anybody else—no damn different!
“You're different than everybody else,” said Gregory J. O'Connell, my nearly seven-foot-tall criminal lawyer. “That's your problem.” He was sitting behind his fabulous mahogany desk, leaning back in his fabulous high-backed leather chair, and holding a copy of my not-so-fabulous indictment. He was a good-looking man, in his late thirties or early forties, with dark-brown hair and a very square jaw. He bore a striking resemblance to Tom Selleck from Magnum, P.I., although he seemed much taller to me. In fact, leaning back the way he was, his head and torso seemed a mile long. (Actually, he was only six-four, although anyone over six-three seemed seven feet tall to me.)
Magnum plowed on: “Or at least that's how the government views you, as well as your friends in the press, who can't seem to get enough of you.” His voice was a deep tenor, his advice offered in the same theatrical way Enrico Caruso might offer it, if he were so inclined. “I hate to say it,” continued the towering tenor, “but you've become the poster child for small-stock fraud, Jordan. That's why the judge set your bail at ten million, to make an example of you.”
With a hiss: “Oh, really? Well it's all f**king bullshit, Greg! Every last drop of it!” I popped out of my black leather armchair, elevating myself to his eye level. “Everyone on Wall Street's a crook, you know that!” I cocked my head to the side and narrowed my eyes suspiciously. “I mean, what kind of lawyer are you, anyway? I'm f**king innocent, for Chrissake! Completely f**king innocent!”
“I know you are,” said my friend and lawyer of four years. “And I'm Mother Teresa, on my way to Rome for a pilgrimage. And Nick over there”—he raised his chin toward the room's third occupant, his partner Nick De Feis, who was sitting in the black leather armchair next to mine—”is Mahatma Gandhi. Isn't that right, Nick?”
“It's Mohandas,” replied Nick, who had graduated at the top his class at Yale. He was about the same age as Greg and had an IQ^ around seven thousand. He had short dark hair, intense eyes, a calm demeanor, and a slender build. About my height, he was a greater wearer of blue pinstripe suits, heavily starched collars, and WASPy wingtip shoes, the sum of which made him look very intelligent. “Mahatma's not actually a name,” continued the Yale-man. “It's Sanskrit for great soul, in case you were wondering. Mohandas was—”
I cut him off with: “Who gives a fuck, Nick? I mean, sweet Jesus! I'm facing life in prison and you two bastards are jabbering away in Sanskrit!” I walked over to a floor-to-ceiling plate-glass window that shoved an awesome view of the concrete jungle of Manhattan down your throat. I stared out the window blankly, wondering how the f**k I ended up here—and knowing exactly how.
We were on the twenty-sixth floor of an art-deco-style office building that rose up sixty stories above Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. It was an area of Manhattan known as Bryant Park, although it used to be known as Needle Park, when two hundred her**n-addicted hookers, back in the seventies, had proudly called it home. But the park had long since been reclaimed and was now considered a fine place for working-class Manhattanites to enjoy a serene lunch, a place where they could sit on green-slat benches and breathe in the noxious fumes of a hundred thousand passing automobiles and listen to the blaring horns of twenty thousand immigrant cabbies. I looked down at the park, but all I could see was a swath of green grass and some ant-size people, none of whom, I figured, were wearing ankle bracelets. I found that very depressing.
Anyway, this particular building—namely, 500 Fifth Avenue-was an especially fine place to keep a law office. In fact, that was something that had instilled great confidence in me when I'd first met Nick and Greg four years ago, confirming a gut feeling I'd had that these two young lawyers were quickly on the rise.
You see, at the time, the law firm of De Feis O'Connell & Rose wasn't one of New York's marquis names. Rather, they were up-and-comers, two sharp young lawyers who'd made a name for themselves at the U.S. Attorney's Office (prosecuting crooks like me) and who'd only recently made the leap into private practice, where they could earn some real bucks (defending crooks like me).
The firm's third partner, Charlie Rose, had died tragically of a malignant brain tumor. But the gold-plated sign on the office's walnut front door still bore his name, and there were numerous pictures of him on the walls of the reception area, the conference room, and the walls of both Nick's and Greg's offices. It was a sentimental touch not lost on me. In my mind, the message was clear: Nick and Greg were extremely loyal guys, the very sort of guys to whom I could entrust my freedom.