He nodded.
“Right, so follow me for a second: Since Ididn't actually own the brokerage firms, it was mewho was getting shares in hot new issues, and it was mewho was kicking back cash to the owners.” I paused, searching for a simple way to explain to Magnum (who wasn't a crook) how things went down in a crooked world. “In other words, in the early nineties, back when I ownedStratton, Iwas the one who was getting the cash kickbacks. But after I was thrown out of the brokerage business and was operating from behind the scenes, the whole process reversed itself, and Iwas the one who was paying the kickbacks—paying off the owners of the brokerage firms. You understand?”
He nodded again. “Yes, I do,” he said confidently. “That makes perfect sense to me.”
I nodded back. “Good, because it happens to be the truth.” I shrugged. “Anyway, I don't even have the million dollars. My mother-in-law is holding it for me.”
“Why is that?” asked Magnum, taken aback.
How naive! I thought. Magnum was a fine lawyer, but he didn't think like a true criminal. I would just have to educate him. “Because the night I was arrested, I thought Coleman would come back with a search warrant. So I told Nadine to give the cash to her mother for safekeeping. But I can get it back anytime I want. You think I should?”
“Yes, you should. And if the subject of cash comes up again, you should offer that information proactively. Remember, as long as you're honest, you can't get into trouble.” He reached into his suit-jacket pocket and pulled out a single sheet of yellow legal paper that had been folded lengthwise, into thirds. Then he smiled and raised his eyebrows three times in rapid succession and placed the sheet of paper on the conference table. He slipped on a pair of reading glasses and unfolded the precious document and said, “This is the list of people you said you have information on. There are ninety-seven names on it, and some of them are pretty damn juicy.” He shook his head. “Did you really commit crimes with all these people?” he asked incredulously. “It seems almost impossible.”
I pursed my lips and nodded slowly. Then I sat down beside him and took a moment to study this esteemed list, which read like a who's who of Wall Street villains. And accompanying the villainous Wall Streeters were some corrupt politicians, some crooked police officers, a corrupt judge or two, a handful of mobsters, and some accountants and lawyers and CEOs and CFOs, and then a dozen or so civilians—people who weren't actually in the brokerage business but had acted as my nominee, which was Wall Street lingo for front man.
With a sinking heart, I said, “What a fucking shame this is.” I scanned the list, shaking my head in despair. “This is really ugly, Greg, really fucking ugly. I thought you were gonna leave some of these names off, some of my friends like Lipsky… and Elliot Lavigne… and… uh, Andy Greene?”
He shook his head slowly. “I couldn't do it,” he said gravely. “It would make matters worse. If I left one of your friends off the list, it would pique the government's interest that much more.”
I nodded in resignation, knowing that Magnum was right. Only yesterday, when we'd made the list, it'd seemed like no big deal. We'd even had a few laughs over it, finding humor in how people from all walks of life could be corrupted by the allure of fast money on Wall Street. It seemed that greed, in the shape of instantaneous profits, knew no strangers. It crossed over all ethnic lines, infecting all age groups. On the list were blacks, whites, Asians, Hispanics, Indians (dots, not feathers), Indians (feathers, not dots), the young, the old, the healthy, the infirm, males, females, homosexuals, bisexuals, you name it. It seemed that no one could resist the temptation of making hundreds of thousands of dollars with no risk. What a sad commentary, I thought, on the state of twentieth-century capitalism.
Five minutes later, the list was still lying on the conference table, although it had a much larger audience now. The Bastard, the Witch, OCD, and the Mormon were back in the room, all of them hunched over in their armchairs, staring down at the list as if it were the Holy Grail.
“This is a pretty inclusive list,” marveled the Bastard. Then he looked up and smiled a reasonably friendly smile at me and said, “If this is a sign of things to come, Jordan, then everything should work out very well for you.” He looked down at the list again and kept muttering, “Very well, indeed… this is excellent…”
I smiled dutifully and tuned out. And as the Bastard kept fawning over my list, I found myself wondering what he would be thinking right now if I'd left all the hookers on the list. There must have been a thousand of those,or at least five hundred. What would the Witch think of that? Would she try to cast an impotence spell on me? She had heard the stories, no doubt, of how we Strattonites classified our hookers like stocks—with the best hookers being Blue Chips and the skankiest hookers being Pink Sheeters (the Pink Sheets was where stocks of little or no value were listed). And somewhere, occupying some murky middle ground, were the NASDAQs, who were either fallen Blue Chips or had never been hot enough to qualify for true Blue Chip status.
“… best place to start is from the beginning,” said the Bastard, who'd finally stopped his muttering. He picked up a cheap Bic pen and said, in a dead-serious tone: “Where did you attend grade school?”
“P.S. One Sixty-nine,” I replied.
He nodded a single time, then scribbled down my answer on a yellow legal pad. “And that was in Bayside?”
“Yes. Bayside, Queens.”
He scribbled that down too and then stared at me, as if he were expecting me to say more. But I didn't. I remained silent, waiting for him to ask the next question.
“Feel free to expand on your answers,” the Bastard said. “Less is not more in this situation.” He smiled thinly.
I nodded in understanding. “Sure,” I said, and I said no more.
I wasn't even trying to give the Bastard a hard time; it was just that, over the years, I'd been trained to give brief answers during legal inquisitions. In point of fact, I had been deposed no less than fifty times—mostly by the NASD (in customer arbitrations), but also by the SEC and the Senate Ethics Committee, the latter of which had been conducting a bribery investigation into one of their less esteemed senators.
Whatever. I'd been conditioned to give only yes or no answers— to offer no extraneous information based on what I thoughtmy interrogator wanted to hear. And while I was aware that the ground rules were different now, old habits died hard.
A few more moments of silence passed, then the Bastard finally said, “You were an A student in grade school?”
“Yes,” I said proudly. “Straight A's all the way.”
“Any disciplinary problems?”
“None to speak of, although I didget in trouble once for pulling a girl's hat off her head on the way home from school.” I shrugged. “It was in the third grade, though, so it didn't end up on my permanent record.” I thought back for a moment. “You know, it's funny, but I can trace pretty much every problem I've ever had in my life back to a female.” Or, more accurately, I thought, to the pursuit of pussy.
There was silence, and then more silence. Finally I took a deep breath and said, “Do you want me to tell you the story of my life? Is that what you're looking for?”
“Yes,” the Bastard answered, nodding his head slowly, “that's exactly what we're looking for.” He put his pen down, leaned back in his seat, and said, “I'm sure some of the last few questions seemed a bit ridiculous to you, but I assure you they're not. When you're on the witness stand, the defense is going to try to paint you as a career criminal, a born liar who'll say anything to get himself off the hook. And wherever they think there's dirt—even if it's in your childhood—that's where they'll dig. They'll use whatever they find to try to discredit you.”