The Wolf Of Wall Street Part 4

"What do you think he's gonna do with the net?" asked the aspiring Bionic Woman.

I ran the possibilities through my mind. "I'm not really sure-Oh, s.h.i.+t, I know exactly what..."

All at once, faster than would seem possible, Danny ripped off his suit jacket, threw it on the floor, unb.u.t.toned his s.h.i.+rtsleeve, pushed it up past his elbow, and plunged his hand into the fishbowl. His entire forearm was submerged. Then he began thras.h.i.+ng his arm in all directions, trying to catch an unsuspecting orange goldfish in the palm of his hand. His face was set in stone, with the look of a man possessed by pure evil.

A dozen young sales a.s.sistants seated close to the action jumped out of their seats and recoiled in horror at the very sight of Danny trying to capture the innocent goldfish.

"Oh...my...G.o.d," said Janet. "He's gonna kill it."

Just then Danny's eyes popped wide open and his jaw dropped down a good three inches. It was a face that so much as said, "Gotcha!" A split second later he yanked his arm out of the fishbowl, with the orange goldfish firmly in his grasp.

"He's got it!" cried Janet, putting her fist to her mouth.

"Yeah, but the million-dollar question is, what's he gonna do with it?" I paused for just an instant, then added, "But I'm willing to bet you a hundred to one on a thousand bucks that he eats it. Are we on?"

An instant reply: "A hundred to one? You're on! He won't do it! It's too gross. I mean-"

Janet was cut off as Danny climbed on top of a desk and extended his arms out, as if he were Jesus Christ on the cross. He screamed, "This is what happens when you f.u.c.k with your pets on new-issue day!" As an afterthought, he added, "And no f.u.c.king bow ties in the boardroom! It's f.u.c.king...ridiculous!"

Janet the welcher: "I want to cancel my bet right now!"

"Sorry, too late!"

"Come on! It's not fair!"

"Neither is life, Janet." I shrugged innocently. "You should know that." And just like that, Danny opened up his mouth and dropped the orange goldfish down his gullet.

A hundred sales a.s.sistants let out a collective gasp, while ten times as many brokers began cheering in admiration-paying homage to Danny Porush, executioner of innocent marine life. Never one to miss an opportunity to ham it up, Danny responded with a formal bow, as if he were on a Broadway stage. Then he jumped off the desk into the arms of his admirers.

I started snickering at Janet. "Well, don't worry about paying me. I'll just take it out of your paycheck."

"Don't you f.u.c.king dare!" she hissed.

"Fine, you can owe me, then!" I smiled and winked. "Now go order the flowers and bring me some coffee. I gotta start this f.u.c.king day already." With a bounce in my step and a smile on my face, I walked into my office and closed the door-ready to take on anything the world could toss at me.

CHAPTER 6

FREEZING REGULATORS

It was less than five minutes later, and I was sitting in my office, behind a desk fit for a dictator, in a chair as big as a throne. I c.o.c.ked my head to the side and said to the room's two other occupants, "Now let me get this straight: You guys want to bring a midget in here and toss his little a.s.s around the boardroom?"

In unison, they nodded.

Sitting across from me, in an overstuffed oxblood leather club chair, was none other than Danny Porush. At this particular moment he seemed to be suffering no ill effects from his latest fishcapade and was now trying to sell me on his latest brainstorm, which was: to pay a midget five grand to come into the boardroom and be tossed around by brokers, in what would certainly be the first Midget Tossing Compet.i.tion in Long Island history. And as odd as the whole thing sounded, I couldn't help but be somewhat intrigued.

Danny shrugged his shoulders. "It's not as crazy as it sounds. I mean, it's not like we're gonna toss the little b.a.s.t.a.r.d in any odd direction. The way I see it, we'd line up wrestling mats at the front of the boardroom and give the top-five brokers on the Madden deal two tosses each. We'd paint a bull's-eye at one end of the mat and then put down some Velcro so the little b.a.s.t.a.r.d sticks. Then we pick a few of the hot sales a.s.sistants to hold up signs-like they're judges at a diving compet.i.tion. They can score based on throwing style, distance, degree of difficulty, all that sort of s.h.i.+t."

I shook my head in disbelief. "Where are you gonna find a midget on such short notice?" I looked over at Andy Greene, the room's third occupant. "What's your opinion on this matter? You're the firm's lawyer; you must have something something to say...no?" to say...no?"

Andy nodded sagely, as if he were measuring the appropriate legal response. He was an old and trusted friend, who'd recently been promoted to head of Stratton's Corporate Finance Department. It was Andy's job to sift through the dozens of business plans Stratton received each day and decide which, if any, were worth pa.s.sing along to me. In essence, the Corporate Finance Department served as a manufacturing plant-providing finished goods in the form of shares and warrants in initial public offerings, or new issues, as the phrase went on Wall Street.

Andy was wearing the typical Stratton uniform-consisting of an immaculate Gilberto suit, white s.h.i.+rt, silk necktie, and, in his case, the worst toupee this side of the Iron Curtain. At this particular moment, it looked like someone had taken a withered donkey's tail and slapped it onto his egg-shaped Jewish skull, poured sh.e.l.lac over it, stuck a cereal bowl over the sh.e.l.lac, and then placed a twenty-pound plate of depleted uranium over the cereal bowl and let it sit for a while. It was for this very reason that Andy's official Stratton nickname was Wigwam.

"Well," said Wigwam, "in terms of the insurance issues here, if we get a signed waiver from the midget, along with some sort of hold-harmless agreement, then I don't think we have any liability if the midget were to break his neck. But we would need to take every precaution that a reasonable man would take, which is clearly the legal requirement in a situation like..."

Jesus! I wasn't looking for a f.u.c.king legal a.n.a.lysis of this whole midget-tossing business-I just wanted to know if Wigwam thought it was good for broker morale! So I tuned out, keeping one eye on the green-diode numbers and letters that were skidding across the computer monitors on either side of my desk and the other eye on the floor-to-ceiling plate-gla.s.s window that looked out into the boardroom.

Wigwam and I went all the way back to grade school. Back then he had this terrific head of the finest blond hair you've ever seen, as fine as corn silk, in fact. But, alas, by his seventeenth birthday his wonderful head of hair was a distant memory, barely thick enough for the dreaded male comb-over.

Faced with the impending doom of being bald as an eagle while still in high school, Andy decided to lock himself in his bas.e.m.e.nt, smoke five thousand joints of cheap Mexican reefer, play video games, eat frozen Ellio's pizza for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and wait for Mother Nature, the b.i.t.c.h that she was, to play out her cruel joke on him.

He emerged from his bas.e.m.e.nt three years later, a fifty-year-old ornery Jew with a few strands of hair, a prodigious potbelly, and a newfound personality that was a cross between the humdrum Eeyore, from Winnie the Pooh, and Henny Penny, who thought the sky was falling. Along the way, Andy managed to get caught cheating on his SATs, which forced him into exile to the little town of Fredonia in upstate New York, where students freeze to death in summer, at the local educational inst.i.tution, Fredonia State University. But he did manage to negotiate his way through the rigorous academic demands of that fine inst.i.tution and graduate five and a half years later-not one ounce smarter, yet a good deal frumpier. From there he finagled his way into some Mickey Mouse law school in Southern California-earning a diploma that held about as much legal weight as one you'd receive from a Cracker Jack box.

But, of course, at the investment-banking firm of Stratton Oakmont, mere trivialities such as these didn't mean a lot. It was all about personal relations.h.i.+ps; that and loyalty. So when Andrew Todd Greene, alias Wigwam, caught wind of the dramatic success that had rained down on his childhood friend, he followed in the footsteps of the rest of my childhood friends and sought me out, swore undying loyalty to me, and hopped on the gravy train. That was a little over a year ago. Since then, in typical Stratton fas.h.i.+on, he'd undermined and backstabbed and manipulated and cajoled and squeezed out anyone who stood in his way, until he Peter-Principled himself all the way to the very top of the Stratton food chain.

Having had no experience in the subtle art of Stratton-style corporate finance-identifying fledgling growth companies so desperate for money that they were willing to sell a significant chunk of their inside owners.h.i.+p to me before I financed them-I was still in the process of training him. And given the fact that Wigwam possessed a legal diploma that I wouldn't use to wipe my daughter's perfect little bottom, I started him off with a base salary of $500,000.

"...so does that make sense to you?" asked Wigwam.

Suddenly I realized he was asking me a question, but other than it having something to do with tossing the midget, I hadn't the slightest idea what the f.u.c.k he was talking about. So I ignored him and turned to Danny and asked, "Where are you gonna find a midget?"

He shrugged. "I'm not really sure, but if you give me the green light my first call is gonna be to Ringling Bros. Circus."

"Or maybe to the World Wrestling Federation," added my trusted attorney.

Jesus H. Christ! I thought. I was up to my ears in more nuts than a fruitcake! I took a deep breath and said, "Listen, guys, f.u.c.king around with midgets ain't no joke. Pound for pound they're stronger than grizzly bears, and, if you want to know the truth, they happen to scare the living s.h.i.+t out of me. So before I approve this midget-tossing business, you need to find me a game warden who can rein in the little critter if he should go off the deep end. Then we're gonna need some tranq darts, a pair a handcuffs, a can of Mace-"

Wigwam chimed in: "A straitjacket-"

Danny added: "An electric cattle prod-"

"Exactly," I said, with a chuckle. "And let's get a couple of vials of saltpeter, just on general principles. After all, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d might pop a hard-on and go after some of the sales a.s.sistants. They're h.o.r.n.y, the wee folk, and they can f.u.c.k like jackrabbits."

We all broke up over that. I said, "In all seriousness, though, if this gets out to the press there's gonna be h.e.l.l to pay."

Danny shrugged. "I don't know, I think we can put a positive spin on the whole thing. I mean, think about it for a second: How many job opportunities are there for midgets? It'll be like we're giving back to the less fortunate." He shrugged again. "Either way, no one'll give a s.h.i.+t."

Well, he was right about that. The truth was that no one could care less about the articles anymore. Every one of them always had the same negative slant-that the Strattonites were wild renegades, headed by me, a precocious young banker, who'd created my own self-contained universe out on Long Island, where normal behavior no longer applied. In the eyes of the press, Stratton and I had become inexorably linked, like Siamese twins. Even when I'd donated money to a foundation for abused children, they managed to find something wrong with it-writing a single paragraph about my generosity and three or four pages about everything else.

The press onslaught had started in 1991, when an insolent reporter from Forbes Forbes magazine, Roula Khalaf, coined me as magazine, Roula Khalaf, coined me as a twisted version of Robin Hood, who robs from the rich and gives to himself and his merry band of brokers. a twisted version of Robin Hood, who robs from the rich and gives to himself and his merry band of brokers. She deserved an A for cleverness, of course. And, of course, I was a bit taken aback by it, at least at first, until I came to the conclusion that the article was actually a compliment. After all, how many twenty-eight-year-olds got their own personal expose in She deserved an A for cleverness, of course. And, of course, I was a bit taken aback by it, at least at first, until I came to the conclusion that the article was actually a compliment. After all, how many twenty-eight-year-olds got their own personal expose in Forbes Forbes magazine? And there was no denying that all this Robin Hood business emphasized my generous nature! After the article hit, I had a fresh wave of recruits lining up at my door. magazine? And there was no denying that all this Robin Hood business emphasized my generous nature! After the article hit, I had a fresh wave of recruits lining up at my door.

Yes, it was truly ironic that despite working for a guy who'd been accused of everything but the Lindbergh kidnapping, the Strattonites couldn't have been prouder. They were running around the boardroom chanting, "We're your merry band! We're your merry band!" Some of them came into the office dressed in tights; others wore fancy berets at jaunty angles. Someone came up with the inspired notion of deflowering a virgin-for the simple medievalness medievalness of it-but after a painstaking search one couldn't be found, at least not in the boardroom. of it-but after a painstaking search one couldn't be found, at least not in the boardroom.

So, yes, Danny was right. No one cared about the articles. But midget-tossing? I had no time for it right now. I still had serious issues to resolve with the Steve Madden underwriting, and I still had to contend with my father, who was lurking close-holding a half-million-dollar Am Ex bill in one hand and a cup of chilled Stoli, no doubt, in the other.

I said to Wigwam, "Why don't you go track down Madden, maybe offer him a few words of encouragement or something. Tell him to keep it short and sweet and not to go off on any tangents about how much he adores women's shoes. They might lynch him over that."

"Consider it done," said Wigwam, rising from his chair. "No shoe talk from the Cobbler."

Before he was even out the door, Danny was tras.h.i.+ng his toupee. "What's with that cheap f.u.c.king rug of his?" Danny muttered. "It looks like a dead f.u.c.king squirrel."

I shrugged. "I think it's a Hair Club for Men special. He's had the thing forever. Maybe it just needs to be dry-cleaned. Anyway, let's get serious for a second: We still have the same issue with the Madden deal, and we're out of time."

"I thought NASDAQ said they'd list it?" asked Danny.

I shook my head. "They will, but they'll only let us keep five percent of our stock; that's it. The rest we have to divest to Steve before it starts trading. That means we have to sign the papers now, this morning! And it also means we have to trust Steve to do the right thing after the company goes public." I compressed my lips and started shaking my head slowly. "I don't know, Dan-I get this feeling he's playing his own game of chess with us. I'm not sure if he'll do the right thing if push comes to shove."

"You can trust him, JB. He's a hundred percent loyal. I know the guy forever, and believe me-he knows the code of omerta as good as anyone." Danny put his thumb and forefinger to his mouth and twisted it, as if to say, "He'll keep his mouth shut nice and tight!" which is exactly what the Mafioso word omerta omerta meant: silence. Then he said, "Anyway, after everything you've done for him, he's not gonna screw you. He's no fool, Steve, and he's making so much money as my rathole that he won't risk losing that." meant: silence. Then he said, "Anyway, after everything you've done for him, he's not gonna screw you. He's no fool, Steve, and he's making so much money as my rathole that he won't risk losing that."

Rathole was a Stratton code word for a nominee, a person who owned shares of stock on paper but was nothing more than a front man. There was nothing inherently illegal about being a nominee, as long as the appropriate taxes were being paid and the nominee arrangement didn't violate any securities laws. In fact, the use of nominees was prevalent on Wall Street, with big players using them to build stock positions in a company without alerting other investors. And as long as you didn't acquire more than five percent of any one company-at which point you'd be required to file a 13D disclosing your owners.h.i.+p and intentions-it was all perfectly legal. was a Stratton code word for a nominee, a person who owned shares of stock on paper but was nothing more than a front man. There was nothing inherently illegal about being a nominee, as long as the appropriate taxes were being paid and the nominee arrangement didn't violate any securities laws. In fact, the use of nominees was prevalent on Wall Street, with big players using them to build stock positions in a company without alerting other investors. And as long as you didn't acquire more than five percent of any one company-at which point you'd be required to file a 13D disclosing your owners.h.i.+p and intentions-it was all perfectly legal.

But the way we were using nominees-to secretly buy large blocks of Stratton new issues-violated so many securities laws that the SEC was trying to invent new ones to stop us. The problem was that the laws currently on the books had more holes than Swiss cheese. Of course, we weren't the only ones on Wall Street taking advantage of this; in fact, everyone was. It was just that we were doing it with a bit more panache-and brazenness.

I said to Danny, "I understand he's your rathole, but controlling people with money isn't as easy as it seems. Trust me on that. I've been doing it longer than you. It's more about managing your rathole's future expectations and less about what you've made him in the past. Yesterday's profits are yesterday's news, and, if anything, they work against you. People don't like feeling indebted to someone, especially a close friend. So after a while your ratholes start resenting you. I've already lost a few friends that way. You will too; just give it some time. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that friends.h.i.+ps bought with money don't last very long, and the same goes with loyalty. That's why old friends like Wigwam are priceless around here. You can't buy loyalty like that; you know what I'm saying?"

Danny nodded. "Yeah, and that's what I have with Steve."

I nodded sadly. "Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to belittle your relations.h.i.+p with Steve. But we're talking about eight million bucks here, on the low side. Depending on what happens with the company, it could be ten times that." I shrugged. "Who really knows what's gonna happen? I don't have a crystal ball in my pocket-although I do have six Ludes there, and I'll gladly split them with you after the market closes!" I raised my eyebrows three times in rapid succession.

Danny smiled and gave me the thumbs-up sign. "I'm in like Flynn!"

I nodded. "Anyway-in all seriousness-I will will tell you that I got a really good feeling about this one. I think this company's got a shot of hitting it out of the park. And if it does, we have two million shares. So do the math, pal: At a hundred bucks a share that's two hundred million bucks. And that kind of money makes people do strange things. Not just Steve Madden." tell you that I got a really good feeling about this one. I think this company's got a shot of hitting it out of the park. And if it does, we have two million shares. So do the math, pal: At a hundred bucks a share that's two hundred million bucks. And that kind of money makes people do strange things. Not just Steve Madden."

Danny nodded and said, "I understand what you're saying, and there's no doubt that you're the master at this stuff. But I'm telling you, Steve is loyal. The only problem is how to get that kind of money from him. He's a slow payer as it is."

It was a valid point. One of the problems with ratholes was figuring out how to generate cash without raising any red flags. It was easier said than done, especially when the numbers went into the millions. "There are ways," I said confidently. "We could work some of it out with some sort of consulting contract, but if the numbers go into the tens of millions we'll have to consider doing something with our Swiss accounts, although I'd like to keep that under wraps as much as possible. Anyway, the way things are going we have bigger issues than just Steve Madden Shoes-like the fifteen other companies in the pipeline just like Madden. And if I'm having trouble trusting Steve, well, most of the people I hardly even know."

Danny said, "Just tell me what you want me to do with Steve and I'll get it done. But I'm still telling you that you don't need to worry about him. He sings your praises more than anyone."

I was well aware of how Steve sang my praises, perhaps too aware. The simple fact was that I had made an investment in his company and taken eighty-five percent in return, so what did he really owe me? In fact, unless he was the reincarnation of Mahatma Gandhi, he had to resent me-at least somewhat-for grabbing such a large percentage of his namesake.

And there were other things about Steve that bothered me, things that I couldn't share with Danny-namely, that Steve had made subtle intimations to me that he would prefer to deal directly with me than through Danny. And while I had no doubt that Steve was simply trying to earn brownie points with me, his strategy couldn't have been more off the mark. What it proved was that Steve was cunning and manipulative-and, most importantly, in search of the Bigger Better Deal. If somewhere down the line he found a Bigger Better Deal than me, all bets would be off.

Right now Steve needed me. But it had little to do with Stratton raising him $7 million and even less to do with the approximately $3 million Danny had made him as his rathole. That was yesterday's news. Going forward, my hold on Steve was based on my ability to control the price of his stock after it went public. As Steve Madden's dominant market maker, virtually all the buying and selling would occur within the four walls of Stratton's boardroom-which would afford me the opportunity to move the stock up and down as I saw fit. So if Steve didn't play ball, I could literally crush the price of his stock until it was trading in pennies.

It was this very ax, in fact, that hung over the heads of all Stratton Oakmont's investment-banking clients. And I used it to ensure that they stayed loyal to the Stratton cause, which was: to issue me new shares, below the prevailing market price, which I could then sell at an enormous profit, using the power of the boardroom.

Of course, I wasn't the one who'd thought up this clever game of financial extortion. In fact, this very process was occurring at the most prestigious firms on Wall Street-firms like Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley and Dean Witter and Salomon Brothers and dozens of others-none of whom had the slightest compunction about beating a billion-dollar company over the head if they chose not to play ball with them.

It was ironic, I thought, how America's finest and supposedly most legitimate financial inst.i.tutions had rigged the treasury market (Salomon Brothers); bankrupted Orange County, California (Merrill Lynch); and ripped off grandmas and grandpas to the tune of $300 million (Prudential-Bache). Yet they were all still in business-still thriving, in fact, under the protection of a WASPy umbrella.

But at Stratton Oakmont, where our business was microcap investment banking-or, as the press liked to refer to it, penny stocks-we had no such protection. In reality, though, all the new issues were priced between four and ten dollars and weren't actually penny stocks. It was a distinction that was entirely lost on the regulators, much to their own chagrin. It was for this reason that the bozos at the SEC-especially the two who were now camped out in my conference room-were unable to make heads or tails out of a $22 million lawsuit they'd filed against me. In essence, the SEC had engineered their lawsuit as if Stratton were a penny-stock firm, but the simple fact was that Stratton Oakmont bore no resemblance to such.

Penny-stock firms were notoriously decentralized, having dozens of small offices spread throughout the country. Yet, Stratton had only one office, which made it easier to control the negativity that would spread throughout a sales force after the SEC filed a lawsuit. Usually that alone was enough to force a penny-stock firm out of business. And penny-stock firms would target unsophisticated investors, who had little or no net worth, and convince them to speculate with a couple of thousand dollars, at most. Stratton, on the other hand, targeted the wealthiest investors in America, convincing them to speculate with millions. In consequence, the SEC couldn't make their usual claim that Stratton's clients weren't suitable to risk their money in speculative stocks.

But none of this had occurred to the SEC before they filed their lawsuit. Instead, they mistakenly a.s.sumed that the bad press would be enough to drive Stratton out of business. But with only one office to manage, it had been easy to keep the troops motivated, and not a soul left. And it was only after the SEC had already filed their lawsuit that they finally got around to reviewing Stratton's new-account forms and it dawned on them that all Stratton's clients were millionaires.

What I had done was uncover a murky middle ground-namely, the organized selling of five-dollar stocks to the wealthiest one percent of Americans, as opposed to selling penny stocks (priced under a dollar) to the other ninety-nine percent, who had little or no net worth. There was a firm on Wall Street, DH Blair, that had danced around the idea for more than twenty years but had never actually hit the nail on the head. In spite of that, the firm's owner, J. Morton Davis, a savage Jew, had still made a b.l.o.o.d.y fortune in the process and was a Wall Street legend.

But I had had hit the nail on the head, and by sheer luck I'd hit it at exactly the right moment. The stock market was just beginning to recover from the Great October Crash, and chaos capitalism still reigned supreme. The NASDAQ was coming of age and was no longer considered the redheaded stepchild of the New York Stock Exchange. Lightning-fast computers were appearing on every desk-sending ones and zeroes whizzing from coast to coast-eliminating the need to be physically located on Wall Street. It was a time of change, a time of upheaval. And as volume on the NASDAQ soared, I, coincidentally, was embarking on an intensive three-hour-a-day training program with my young Strattonites. From out of the smoldering ashes of the Great Crash, the investment-banking firm of Stratton Oakmont was born. And before any regulator knew what hit, it had ripped through America with the force of an atomic bomb. hit the nail on the head, and by sheer luck I'd hit it at exactly the right moment. The stock market was just beginning to recover from the Great October Crash, and chaos capitalism still reigned supreme. The NASDAQ was coming of age and was no longer considered the redheaded stepchild of the New York Stock Exchange. Lightning-fast computers were appearing on every desk-sending ones and zeroes whizzing from coast to coast-eliminating the need to be physically located on Wall Street. It was a time of change, a time of upheaval. And as volume on the NASDAQ soared, I, coincidentally, was embarking on an intensive three-hour-a-day training program with my young Strattonites. From out of the smoldering ashes of the Great Crash, the investment-banking firm of Stratton Oakmont was born. And before any regulator knew what hit, it had ripped through America with the force of an atomic bomb.

Just then an interesting thought occurred to me, and I said to Danny, "What are those two idiots from the SEC saying today?"

"Nothing really," he replied. "They've been pretty quiet, talking mostly about the cars in the parking lot, the usual s.h.i.+t." He shrugged. "I'll tell you, these guys are totally f.u.c.king clueless! It's like they don't even know we're doing a deal today. They're still looking at trading records from 1991."

"Hmmm," I said, rubbing my chin thoughtfully. I wasn't all that surprised at Danny's response. After all, I'd been bugging the conference room for over a month now and was gathering counter-intelligence against the SEC on a daily basis. And one of the first things I'd learned about securities regulators (besides them being completely devoid of personality) was that one hand had no idea what the other hand was doing. While the SEC bozos in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., were signing off on the Steve Madden IPO, the SEC bozos in New York were sitting in my conference room, entirely unaware of what was about to transpire.

"What's the temperature in there?" I asked with great interest.

Danny shrugged. "High fifties, I think. They've got their coats on."

"For Chrissake, Danny! Why is it so f.u.c.king warm in there? I told you-I want to freeze those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds right back to Manhattan! What do I have to do, call a f.u.c.king refrigeration guy in here to get the job done? I mean, really, Danny, I want icicles coming out of their f.u.c.king noses! What about this don't you understand?"

Danny smiled. "Listen, JB: We can freeze 'em out or we can burn 'em out. I can probably get one of those little kerosene heaters installed right in the ceiling, and we can make the room so hot they'll need salt pills to stay alive. But if we make the place too uncomfortable, they might leave, and then we won't be able to listen to them anymore."

I took a deep breath and let it out slow. Danny was right, I thought. I smiled and said, "All right, f.u.c.k it! We'll let the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds die of old age. But here's what I want to do with Madden: I want him to sign a paper saying that the stock is still ours, regardless of how high the price goes and regardless what it says in the prospectus. Also, I want Steve to put the stock certificate in escrow, so we have control over it. We'll let Wigwam be the escrow agent. And no one has to know about this. It'll all be among friends; omerta, buddy. So unless Steve tries to screw us, it's all good."

Danny nodded. "I'll take care of it, but I don't see how it's gonna help us. If we ever try to break the agreement we'll be in as much trouble as him. I mean, there's like seventeen thousand different"-in spite of the office just being swept for bugs, Danny mouthed the words laws we're breaking laws we're breaking-"if Steve ratholes that much stock."

I held up my hand and smiled warmly. "Whoa-whoa-whoa! Settle down! First of all, I had the office swept for bugs thirty minutes ago, so if it's already bugged again they deserve to catch us. And it's not seventeen thousand laws we're breaking; it's maybe three or four, or five, tops. But either way, no one ever has to know." I shrugged and then changed my tone to one of shock. "Anyway, I'm surprised at you, Dan! Having a signed agreement helps us a lot-even if we can't actually use it. It's a powerful deterrent to stop him from trying to f.u.c.k us over."

Just then Janet's voice came over the intercom: "Your father's heading this way."

A snap response: "Tell him I'm in a meeting, G.o.d d.a.m.n it!"

Janet snapping right back: "f.u.c.k you! You You tell him! I'm not telling him!" tell him! I'm not telling him!"

Why, the insolence! The sheer audacity! A few seconds of silence pa.s.sed. Then I whined, "Oh, come on, Janet! Can't you just tell him I'm in an important meeting or on a conference call or something, please please?"

"No and no," she replied tonelessly.

"Thanks, you're a real gem of an a.s.sistant, let me f.u.c.king tell you! Remind me of this day two weeks from now, when it's time for your Christmas bonus, okay?"

I paused and waited for Janet's response. Nothing. Dead f.u.c.king silence. Unbelievable! Unbelievable! I soldiered on. "How far away is he?" I soldiered on. "How far away is he?"

"About fifty yards, and closing awfully fast. I can see the veins popping out of his head from here, and he's smoking at least one...or maybe two cigarettes at the same time. He looks like a fire-breathing dragon, I swear to G.o.d."

"Thanks for the encouragement, Janet. Can't you at least create some sort of diversion? Maybe pull a fire alarm or something? I-" Just then Danny began rising out of his chair, as if he was attempting to leave my office. I held up my hand and said in a loud, forthright voice, "Where the f.u.c.k do you think you're going, pal, huh?" I started jabbing my index finger in the direction of his club chair. "Now, sit the f.u.c.k back down and relax for a while." I turned my head in the direction of the black speakerphone. "One second, Janet, don't go anywhere." Then I turned back to Danny. "Let me tell you something, buddy: At least fifty or sixty thousand of that Am Ex bill is yours, so you gotta put up with the abuse too. Besides, there's strength in numbers." I turned my head back in the direction of the speakerphone. "Janet, tell Kenny to get his a.s.s in my office right this second. He's gotta deal with this s.h.i.+t too. And come open my door. I need some noise in here."