With a bit of anger slipping out around the edges, I snapped, “Hold still, Nadine! What's wrong with you!”
Her poisonous response: “Fuck you! I hate you—I fucking hateyou!” She grabbed my cheeks and said, with venom: “Look in my eyes, Jordan. Look in my eyes right now.”
I looked. She continued: “Don't ever forget what went down with this marriage; don't you ever fucking forget.” Her blue eyes were like glassy death rays. “This is the last time I'm ever gonna fuck you. This is it; you can mark my words. You're never gonna have me again, so you better enjoy it while it lasts.” And she started grinding into me with deep, rhythmic thrusts, as if she were trying to make me come, right on the spot.
Jesus Christ! I thought. She'd turned the corner on her tequila high! She couldn't possibly mean what she was saying, could she? How could such a beautiful face spew out such venom? It made no sense. I knew the right thing to do would be to climb off her, to not give her the satisfaction of making me come while she was telling me how much she hated me… but she looked absolutely gorgeous in the burnt-apricot glow of the lamp shade. So fuck it!I thought. It was impossible to figure women out, and if she was genuinely serious about this being my last time, I better make it count or at least make myself come quickly, before she changed her mind and said that the last time was the last time… and with a single deep thrust I tried my best to hit the base of her cervix and… bang!…just like that I came inside her. I screamed, “I love you, Nae!” to which she screamed, “I fucking hate you, you asshole!” and then I collapsed on top of her.
And there we lay for what seemed like a very long time, which turned out to be around five seconds, at which point she pushed me off and started crying hysterically. Her body was shaking volcanically, as she said through terrible, gut-wrenching sobs, “Oh, my God! What did I do? What did I do?” She kept repeating those same four words, as I lay next to her, frozen in horror.
I tried to put my arm around her, but she pushed it away.
Then came more sobs, and then she said something that I would never forget for the rest of my life. “It was blood money!” she sobbed. “It was all blood money!” She could barely get the words out through her sobs. “I knew it all along, and I did nothing. People lost money and I spent it. Oh, God—what did I do?”
All at once I found myself growing intensely angry. It was her reference to blood money, the thought that everything we shared-including my own success—was somehow tainted. It was as if our entire marriage had been a farce, as if nothing around me was real and genuine. I was a man of parts, the sum of which didn't equal a whole. I was surrounded by wealth and beauty and ostentation, yet I felt poor and ugly and hopelessly embarrassed. I longed for simpler days. I longed for a simpler life. I longed for a simpler wife.
Making no effort to hide my displeasure, I went right back at her. “Blood money,” I sputtered. “Give me a fucking break, Nadine! I work on Wall Street; I'm not a fucking mobster.” I shook my head in disgust. “Yeah—I cut a few corners, just like everybody else, so get a fucking grip!”
Through terrible sobs, from deep in the breadbasket: “Oh, God, you corrupted everyone—even my own mother! And I… I… just stood there and… and watched… and… and… spent… the… the… blood… mon… ney!” She was sobbing so uncontrollably that her words were coming out one at a time.
“Your mother?” I screamed. “You know how good I've been to your mother? When I met her she was getting thrown out of her fucking apartment for not paying her fucking rent! And I took care of your idiot brother and your idiot fucking father, and your sister and you and everybody else, God damn it!And this is what I get in return?” I paused, trying to collect myself. I was crying too now, although I was so angry my own tears were lost on me. “I can't fucking believe this,” I screamed. “I can't fucking believe this! How the fuck could you do this now? You're my wife, Nadine. How could you do this now?”
“I'm sorry,” she sobbed. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you.” She was shaking like a leaf. “I didn't mean to… I didn't mean to,” and she rolled off the bed, onto the $120,000 Edward Fields carpet, and she curled up in the fetal position and continued to cry uncontrollably.
And that was that.
I knew right then and there that I had lost my wife forever. Whatever bond the Duchess and I had once shared had now been severed. Whether or not I would ever get to make love to her again was still a matter of question, and, in truth, I couldn't have cared less. After all, I was facing much bigger problems than where to get my rocks off.
In fact, just down the hall were our two young children, the innocent victims in all this, who were about to wake up to one of the cruelest realities of life:
Nothing lasts forever.
CHAPTER 5
OCD AND THE MORMON
This time, however, the closet terrorist wasn't driving me through the gloomy groin of western Queens; rather, he was driving me through the rancid gullet of western Brooklyn. In fact, we were making our way through a demographic nightmare known as Sunset Park, a neighborhood soethnically diverse-loaded with Chinese and Koreans and Malaysians and Vietnamese and Thais and Puerto Ricans and Mexicans and Dominicans and Salvadorans and Guatemalans, along with a handful of remarkably dim-witted Finns, who were too slow on the uptake to realize that the rest of their Finnish brethren had fled for their lives thirty years ago, when the ethnic hordes invaded—that, staring out the side window, I felt like we were driving through the parking lot of the United Nations after a missile strike.
Yes, this part of Sunset Park was, indeed, a shithole. It was a flat swath of dirt and asphalt punctuated by dilapidated warehouses, deserted storefronts, rotting piers, and bird poop. Downtown Manhattan—where I would ultimately be heading this morning— was just a few miles to the west, on the other side of the polluted East River. From my current vantage point, in the limo's right backseat, I could see the swirling waters of the river, the towering skyline of Lower Manhattan, and the glorious arc of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, stretching to the not-so-glorious borough of Staten Island.
According to plan, at precisely nine a.m., Monsoir pulled in front of a grimy underground parking garage on the south side of a grimy two-way street. As I climbed out of the limousine, I said, “Stay put until I beep you, Monsoir,” and while I'm gone don't be blowing up any bridges, I thought. Then I slammed the door in his face and walked down a short flight of steps to the lower level of the parking garage.
I heard a familiar voice: “Jordan! Over here!”
I turned to my right, and there was Special Agent Gregory Coleman. He was standing in front of a typical government-issue car, which is to say: four doors, no dents, perhaps two years old, and made in America. In fact, it was a 1997 maroon Ford Taurus with lightly tinted windows and no siren. He was leaning against the rear passenger-side door with his arms crossed, the pose of the victorious warrior.
Standing beside him, with a kind smile on his face, was his partner-in-training, Special Agent Bill McCrogan. I had met McCrogan only once, on the night of my arrest, and for some inexplicable reason I had liked him. He seemed too kind to be an FBI agent, although I was certain that once Coleman got through with him he wouldn't be so kind anymore. McCrogan was a few inches taller than Coleman, the better part of five-ten, and he looked about thirty. He had a thick thatch of curly brown hair, broad features, and an entirely average build. Over his pale-blue eyes he wore a pair of wire-rimmed glasses that made him look God-fearing. A Mormon, I figured, probably from Salt Lake City or Provo, or maybe even the hills of Idaho… although who really gave a shit.