John, ever the disciplinarian, shot him a look, to which Carter rolled his blue eyes and put his feet back down. Meanwhile, the Duchess had taken a seat on the Hepplewhite armchair next to John's. She still looked beautiful—a bit older, perhaps, but considering what the two of us had gone through, she looked pretty damn good. She was dressed casually, in jeans and a T-shirt, as were John and I. The kids had on shorts, and their skin glowed with youth and health.
I took a deep breath and said to them: “Come here, guys. I have something I need to talk to you about, and I want you to be sitting on my lap when I do.” I extended an arm toward each of them.
Carter, all fifty-five pounds of him, immediately jumped onto my lap and maneuvered himself onto my right thigh, his legs dangling between mine. Then he put his arms around me. Only eight and a half years old, he sensed nothing.
Chandler moved more slowly, more cautiously. “Is somebody sick?” she asked nervously, easing herself onto my other thigh.
“No,” I said softly, “nobody is sick.”
“But it's bad news, right?”
I nodded sadly. “Yeah, honey, it is. I have to go away for a little while, and while it's not really that long a time for an adult, it's still gonna seem like a very long time for you guys.”
“How long?” she asked quickly.
I squeezed her and Carter close. “About two years, honey.”
I saw the first tears welling up in her eyes. “No!” she said urgently. “You can't go away again. You just moved here! Don't leave us!”
Fighting back tears, I said, “Listen to me, honey—I want both of you to listen to me closely: A long time ago, back when I was in the stock market, I did some things that were very wrong, things that I'm not very proud of now, and there were a lot of people who lost money because of it. And now, all these years later, I have to make up for what I did, which means I have to go to jail for a while and—”
She collapsed in my arms. “Oh, no, Daddy, no… please…” She began to cry hysterically.
I had tears in my eyes. “It's okay, Channy. It's—” and now Carter collapsed in my arms and started to cry hysterically. “Oh, Daddy, don't go! Please…”
I squeezed him closer, as he sobbed on my shoulder. “It's okay,” I said, rubbing his back. “It's gonna be okay, buddy.” Then, to Channy: “It's all right, sweetie. Trust me, the time is gonna fly by!”
Now the Duchess popped out of her armchair. She ran over and sat on the edge of the couch and hugged the kids too. “It's okay, guys. It's… it's gonna be fine.” I looked at the Duchess and she was crying too, her words coming out through tiny snuffles. So now I started crying, at which point John popped out of his own armchair. He sat on the edge of the coffee table and wrapped his arms around the kids too, trying to console them. He wasn't crying yet, but he looked on the verge of it.
There was nothing to do now but let the kids cry. I think we all knew that, and I think even the kids knew it. There were a certain number of tears that needed to be shed before they could try to make sense of it all or at least accept it.
Finally, after a few minutes of rubbing their backs and stroking their hair and telling them about visiting days and how we would still be able to talk on the phone and write each other letters, they began to calm down. Then I went about trying to explain to them how all this happened—how I'd started Stratton at a very young age and how it quickly spiraled out of control. Then I said:
“Now, a lot of it had to do with the drugs, which made me do things that I would never normally do. And it's very important that you learn from that—from Daddy's mistakes—because, when you're older, you might find yourself in a situation where people are using drugs and they're telling you how cool they are and how great they make you feel, and all that sort of stuff. In fact, they might even try to pressure you to use them yourself, which would be the worst thing of all.” I shook my head gravely. “And if that happens, I want you to think of Daddy, and all the problems drugs caused for him, and how they almost killed him once. Then you'll know not to do them yourself, okay?”
They both nodded and said yes.
“Good, because it's very important to me that you understand that, and it's going to make my time away from you much easier knowing that you do.” I paused for a moment, realizing that I owed them more of an explanation than your basic insanity plea centered on drug abuse. I said, “Now, there were other reasons I made mistakes too, guys, and while they might not be as bad as drugs, they were still pretty bad. You see, what happened with Daddy was that I didn't grow up with a lot of money, like you guys have”—I motioned to the plate-glass window, with its breathtaking view of the Pacific—”and I really wanted to be rich. So I cut a few corners along the way, which made me get rich very quickly. Do you know what that means, to cut a few corners?”
Carter shook his head no. Chandler said, “You stole money?”
I was flabbergasted. I looked at the Duchess; she had her lips compressed, as if trying to fight down a giggle. I looked at John, who shrugged as if to say, “She's your daughter!” Now I looked at Chandler.
“Well, I wouldn't say that I actually stole money, Channy, because it wasn't really like that. Here, let me give you an example: Let's just suppose your friend called you and told you that there was this really great toy she wanted to buy, and she asked you to chip in with her for it. And then let's just say you did, because she made the toy sound really fun—like it was the best toy in the world. But then you found out later that the toy didn't cost as much as she said, and she used the money you gave her to buy candy for herself, which she didn't even split with you.” I shook my head gravely. “You see what I mean? Wouldn't that be bad?”
Chandler nodded accusingly. “She stole from me!”
“Yeah,” added Carter. “She stole!”
Unbelievable! I thought. Yeah, maybe I'd stolen, but at least I had done it with a bit of panache! I mean, I hadn't used a gun or anything! But how was I supposed to explain high-pressure sales tactics and stock manipulation to my children?
Now the Duchess chimed in: “Well, it's a bit like stealing, but the difference is that when you're as old as your daddy and me, you're supposed to know better than to send your money to strangers to buy toys, you know? Like you're supposed to take responsibility for your own actions. You understand?”
“Yes,” they said in unison, although I wasn't so sure they did. Either way, I was still glad that the Duchess had made the effort.
There were a few more tears that evening, but the worst of it was over.
Having no other choice, the kids quickly resigned themselves to the fact that they would be seeing me only on visiting days for a while. In the end, my only consolation that night was that I got to fall asleep just the way I had wanted, with Chandler and Carter in my arms. And, of course, I had kept my promise to my little girl and moved to California.
EPILOGUE
THE LAND OF MULLETS hat's with all these mullets?
That wasn't the first thought I had upon entering the brick administration building of the Taft Correctional Institution, but it was close to the first. My first thought was that the building looked rather benign. The reception area was open and airy, with a very high ceiling, a few too many American flags, and a small seating area with upholstered chairs off to one side. Two uniformed guards, one of each gender, sat behind a large Formica reception desk, looking bored more than anything.
Oddly enough, they both sported mullets.
The male's mullet was comprised of reddish-brown hair that had the consistency of a tumbleweed. It was very high on top, rising up a good three inches above his swarthy skull, and very tight on the sides. Yet, in the back, the mullet was as fine as corn silk and went down a few inches past the light-gray shirt collar of his guard's uniform. The female's mullet was of similar construction, although her hair was pineapple blonde and much longer in the back.
I had done a bit of intelligence-gathering over the prior week and was told by someone “in the know” (meaning, an erstwhile guest) that I should show up wearing gray sweats, a white T-shirt, and white tennis sneakers. Anything else would be confiscated and shipped back to my family in a box. The only exception was a tennis racquet, which I would be allowed to bring in. He strongly recommended I do this, because the racquets offered by the rec department were of dubious quality.
It was for that very reason that at precisely eleven a.m. on Friday, January 2, 2004, I entered the administration building wearing a gray sweat suit and carrying a brand-new Head tennis racquet under my right arm. “I'm Jordan Belfort,” I said to the two intake mullets. “I'm here to start serving my sentence.”
“Welcome to Taft,” said the female mullet in a surprisingly friendly tone. “Take a seat over there.” She gestured toward the seating area. “Someone'll be with you in a few minutes.”
After a few minutes, a third guard emerged. He was short, squat, pale, and plain-looking, with childbearing h*ps and the sort of lumbering gait that hints at low intelligence. He wore the same gray guard's uniform as the others, although his looked heavily padded. In his right hand was a clipboard. On his narrow skull was a light-brown mullet that looked lush enough to house a bird's nest. He looked down at the clipboard and said, “Are you Belfort?”
“Yes,” I answered, picking up on the fact that I was no longer Mr. Belfort or even Jordan Belfort. I was simply Belfort.
“Okay,” he said wearily. “Follow me, Belfort.” He led me through a series of foreboding steel gates, the last of which closed behind me with an ominous clank. The unspoken message was: “You are now a prisoner; everything you knew in the outside world is now gone.” Then we entered a small, windowless, tableless, chairless room, at the rear of which was a large white curtain hanging from the ceiling.
“What's with the tennis racquet?” snapped the guard.
“I'm going to the camp; I was told I could bring a tennis racquet with me.”
“Not anymore; they changed the rules a few years ago.” He looked down at the clipboard for a moment, then looked back up and said, “Are you sure you're going to the camp? It says that you're going to the low here.”
Taft had two separate facilities: the low and the camp. The low housed real inmates, whereas the camp housed campers, as the phrase went. While the low wasn't filled with murderers and rapists, it still had its fair share of violence; the camp, however, had none. In fact, it didn't even have a fence around it—you stayed there on the honor system and could walk away at any time.
Trying to remain calm, I said, “I'm sure I'm designated for the camp; the judge recommended it at my sentencing.”
He shrugged, unconcerned. “You can take it up with your counselor; give me your sneakers.”
“My sneakers?” I looked down at my brand-new Nikes. “What's wrong with my sneakers?”
“They have a red stripe on them. Only plain white sneakers are allowed. We'll ship them back to your family along with your tennis racquet. Now go behind the curtain and strip.”
I did as I was told, and two minutes later—after pulling back my ears, running his fingers through my hair, opening my mouth, rolling my tongue around, lifting up one foot, then the other foot, and, finally, lifting up my nut-sack (as the guard referred to it), he gave me back my sweat suit and told me to get dressed. Then he handed me a pair of blue canvas slippers, the sort Chairman Mao had given to political dissidents upon entering one of his reeducation camps.
“Your counselor is Ms. Richards,”1* said the guard. “She'll be here in about an hour. Until then, you can make yourself comfortable.” His last few words came out with a healthy dose of irony; after all, there was nothing in the room to sit on other than the cheap linoleum floor. Then he left, locking the door behind him.
Remain calm! I thought. There was no way they were going to stick me in the low. I was camper material! I had no violence in my background, and I was a first-time offender. I had even cooperated with the government!
Thirty minutes later, the door opened and in walked my counselor, Ms. Richards. She was huge, the better part of six feet tall, with the shoulders of an NFL linebacker and the thick, fleshy features of a shar-pei. Her dark-brown mullet looked a mile high. She was dressed in street clothes—blue jeans and a dark-blue wind-breaker. Her feet were shod in black army boots.
Before she had a chance to say anything, I popped up off the linoleum floor and said, “Ms. Richards, I have a serious problem here: The guard told me that I'm going to the low, but I was designated for the camp. The judge recommended it at my sentencing.”
She flashed me a friendly smile, exposing a pair of central incisors that were so severely overlapped they looked like one giant snaggletooth. I felt a shiver run down my spine. Counselor Snaggletooth said in a rather cheery tone: “Okay; well, let's see if we can't get it sorted out. Follow me.”
Snaggletooth turned out to be very nice. She escorted me to a small interview room, where she spent a few minutes looking down at my file. Finally she said, “I've got good news for you, Belfort; you do qualify for camp.”
Thank God! I thought. I was, indeed, camper material. I had always known it. Why had I even worried myself, for Chrissake? So silly of me.
Then: “Wait! I spoke too soon!”
A fresh wave of panic. “What's wrong now?”
“Your probation officer never sent us your presentencing report. I can't put you in the camp until I review it. The report has all the information about your case.”
Near panic: “So you're sticking me in the low?”
“No, no,” she answered, flashing me her snaggletooth smile. “I wouldn't stick you in the low; I'm sticking you in the hole.”
My eyes popped out of my occipital orbits, like hat pegs. “You're putting me in the hole? As in solitary confinement?”
She nodded slowly. “Yeah, but only until your paperwork gets here. It shouldn't take more than a week.”
Panic on top of panic now: “A week? How can it take a week to get my paperwork here? Can't they just fax it over?”
She compressed her lips and shook her head slowly.
“Oh, Jesus,” I muttered. “A week in the hole. It's not fair.”
Snaggletooth nodded and said, “Yeah, well, welcome to Taft, Belfort.”
First they took my clothes, then they handed me an orange jumpsuit, and then they handed me back my reeducation slippers and told me to put my hands behind my back so they could slap the cuffs on me, which they did, with a smile.
“They” were two uniformed guards from the Special Housing Unit, known as the SHU, for short. Located in the lower bowels of the administration building, the SHU was that section of the prison where they kept the serious hard cases. Handcuffed and panic-stricken, I was escorted down a long, narrow corridor with ominous steel doors on either side.
Not surprisingly, “they” were of an entirely different breed than the affable intake mullets. (Neither of them even had mullets, for Chrissake!) They were unusually tall, overly muscular, and had the sort of overdeveloped jaws that indicate steroid abuse coupled with a genetic disposition toward violence. As we made our way through the SHU, no words were exchanged, other than a passing comment I made about my being thrown in the SHU not for doing something wrong; it was simply one of those lost-paperwork things. (So they really ought to go easy on me.) To that, they both shrugged as if to say, “Who gives a shit?”
The guards stopped and unlocked one of the steel doors. “Step inside,” one of them ordered. “After we close the door, you stick your hands through the slot in the door and we'll uncuff you.” With that, they fairly shoved me into the cell, which was incredibly tiny, perhaps six by twelve feet. Two steel bunk beds were riveted into one wall, a steel seat-desk ensemble was riveted into another wall, and a steel toilet, sans toilet seat, was right out in the open for public dumpages. A tiny window, covered by iron bars, looked out over a dusty field. The lower bunk was occupied by another inmate, a middle-aged white man with a sun-deprived complexion. He was busy doing paperwork, and, to my shock, he sported the most fabulous mullet of all. In fact, it was world class—comprised of curly red hair that was so flat on top you could have used his head as a plate. The moment the guards slammed the door, he popped off the bed and said, “So what happened? What did they say you did?”
“Nothing,” I answered. “I self-surrendered, and they lost my paperwork.”
He rolled his eyes. “That's what they always say.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean they make extra money throwing people in the hole. Taft is not actually part of the Bureau of Prisons; they're a private corporation, for profit. You know that, right?”
I nodded. “Yeah, it's owned by the Wackenhut Corporation.”
“Exactly,” he said. “And each day you're in the hole, Wackenhut bills the federal government an extra hundred dollars. Anyway, I'm Sam Hausman.”2* He extended his closed fist toward me for a jailhouse handshake.
“Jordan Belfort,” I replied, banging knuckles with him. “So what are you in the hole for?”
“I filed a lien on the warden's house and then on a few of the guards’ houses too.”
My eyes nearly popped out of my skull. “You put a lien on the warden's house? Why would you do that?”
He shrugged casually. “I have my reasons. I also did it to my sentencing judge. And the prosecutor too. I've basically destroyed their credit. Now I'm starting foreclosure proceedings against them. What are you in jail for?”
Jesus, this mullet was insane! “Manipulating stocks. A bunch of other stuff too. All of it white-collar. How about you?”
Knowingly: “I didn't do anything; I'm innocent.”
Gee, what a surprise! I thought. “Well, what did they say you did?”
“They say I wrote bad checks, but that's a lie. I can write as many checks as I want, regardless of how much money is in my account. That's the law.”
“Oh, really? Why is that?” I asked.
“Because the government stole my birth certificate the day I was born and stashed it in some vault in Puerto Rico. In exchange, they gave me a straw man named SAM HAUSMAN—that's SAM HAUSMAN, all in capital letters—not the legitimate Sam Hausman, which is in small letters. That's who I really am: Sam Hausman, in small letters.”
He walked over to his bed, which was less than two feet away, and he handed me a book titled Redemption in Law. “Trust me,” he said. “After you're done reading this book, you'll be filing liens against the warden too. Understand: You're nothing more than a slave, Jordan. You need to reclaim your straw man; there's no other way.”