“But when I reached the playground, Jonathon was crying even louder. He was in Danny's arms and literally going ballistic! I said to Danny, ‘You want me to go find your wife for you?’ And Danny recoiled in horror and said, ‘Good God!Find anybody but her! Please! You can call the cops, for all I care, and have me arrested for being a bad father, just don't call my wife, please!
“Of course I thought he was kidding at the time, so I nodded my head and smiled. But he didn't smile back, and that was because he wasn't joking. I wouldn't find out why, though, for a few more days, until Denise and I had the pleasure of going out for dinner with them and watching Nancy pull a lit cigarette out of his mouth and throw it in his face. But, not to jump ahead here: Jonathon didfinally calm down, at which point Danny said to me, ‘My wife tells me she sees you hanging out on your terrace all week in a bathrobe. What do you do for a living?’
“ ‘I'm a stockbroker,’ I replied casually.
“ ‘Really?’ he said. ‘I thought you needed to work on Wall Street to be a stockbroker.’
“I shook my head no. ‘That's a total misconception. Everything is done over the phone now. You could be anywhere. I, for one, work in Great Neck, and I made over fifty grand last month.’
“‘Fifty grand!’ he said. ‘I don't believe it! I have a bunch of friends who are stockbrokers, and they're all sucking wind since the crash!’
“ ‘I only deal in small stocks,’ I said. ‘They weren't hit as hard by the crash. What kind of work do you do?’
“ ‘I'm in the ambulette business,’ he answered quickly, ‘and it's a total fucking nightmare. I have seven vans that constantly break down and seven Haitian drivers who barely show up for work. I'd torch the place, if I thought I could get away with it.’
“I nodded in understanding. Without even thinking, I said, ‘Well, if you want to make a change, I'm sure I can get you a job at my company. I'll train you myself,’ to which Danny looked me in the eye and said, ‘Pal, if you prove to me you're making fifty thousand a month, I'll be at your doorstep, six a.m. tomorrow morning, ready to shovel shit for you!’”
“When did he actually come to work for you?” asked the Bastard.
“The next morning,” I said. “True to his word, he was waiting at my door, holding a copy of The Wall Street Journal.”
“What about his ambulette business?”
I shrugged. “He never went back. He had a fifty-fifty partner, and he just handed the guy the keys and said, ‘See ya later, pal. Nice knowing you!’ and that was it. He cold-called for me for the rest of the summer and then passed his broker's test the first week of September. George, meanwhile, was becoming more and more aggressive with me about opening up our own brokerage firm. The SEC had started investigating the Investors’ Center. If word leaked out, he said, the firm would quickly collapse.
“What worried me most was that I had just convinced Lipsky and the Penguin to come work for me. The Penguin had finally thrown in the towel on the meat-and-seafood business, and Lipsky's furniture business was on the verge of bankruptcy. So, in a way, I was responsible for them now too. That was why I finally agreed to go with George to see a lawyer, because I wanted to gather intelligence.”
“Which lawyer did you see?” asked the Bastard.
“His name was Lester Morse, although Danny and I used to call him Lester Re-Morse,because everything about the guy was remorseful, or, better yet, moroseful.He was the ultimate doom-and-gloomer, almost difficult to fathom.
“I mean, every person he knew was either rotting away in jail or had lost their last dime to the SEC. And the way the Moroser told a story made you want to slit your own wrists. He would start off by saying what a great guy someone was and how he'd made a fortune in his heyday, but the story would quickly degenerate into a cautionary tale, and he would end by saying, ‘… and what the government did to him was a real travesty. He's in Allenwood now, and he won't be getting out for ten more years.’ Then he'd shake his head and move on to the next victim.”
“Interesting,” mumbled the Bastard.
“Yeah,” I said, “what's even moreinteresting is that one of the names he brought up was Bob Brennan, the Blue-eyed Devil himself.”
The Bastard perked up. “Oh, really! What did he say about him?”
I shrugged. “He said he was the only person to ever walk away with all the marbles—two hundred million, by Lester's account.”
“Hmmm,” muttered the Bastard. “Did he say anything else?”
“Yeah, he said that Bob was too smart to get caught. He said that he was always two steps ahead of the regulators and that he covered his tracks like an Indian. I remember being very intrigued at the time—swearing to myself that if I ever decided to go into the brokerage business, I would want to be just like Bob Brennan.
“You see, Lester didn't paint out Bob to be an archcriminal—in fact, quite the contrary. According to Lester, it was the fault of overzealous regulators, along with a two-tiered justice system that was biased against penny-stock firms. WASP firms, on the other hand, got away with murder.”
“Did you believe him?” asked the Bastard.
“For the most part, yes, although I won't deny that his words seemed a bit self-serving. I knew enough at this point to realize that penny stocks stacked the deck against the clients, although a stacked deck and blatant illegality are two different things. Meanwhile, Lester's office reminded me of the Investors’ Center. It was small and dingy and didn't reek of success. And Lester reminded me of an aging leprechaun. He was a squat five foot four, and he was completely bald on top, with thick swaths of curly gray hair over his ears.”
“So it was just the three of you at the meeting?” asked the Bastard.
“No, there were four of us. Mike Valenoti was there too.” I looked at OCD. “Mike, I'm sure, you're familiar with.”
OCD nodded. “I have a bunch of questions about Valenoti.”
“I'm not surprised,” I said. “If there was a single person who helped me turn Stratton into Stratton, it was Mike Valenoti. He was the operational brain behind everything, the one who kept the place cranking away on all twelve cylinders. He was my first mentor—even before Al Abrams—and he was also the first Wall Street wizard I'd ever met. I mean, his breadth of knowledge was absolutely staggering!”
I shrugged. “But to save you time, I'll tell you that Mike Valenoti is completely innocent in this. He was always trying to keep me on the straight and narrow, and I was constantly swearing to him that I was doing things right. In the end, though, he became so overwhelmed with the influx of business that he couldn't see the big picture anymore. He had no idea I was breaking the law.”
OCD twisted his lips for a moment. “I appreciate your loyalty to Mike,” he said, “but it seems just a tinybit implausible that someone as sophisticated as Mike wouldn't know what was going on.” He flashed me a quick, disbelieving smile. “You see what I'm saying?”
I nodded slowly. “Yeah, what you're saying makes total sense, Greg. But it also happens to be totally wrong.” I paused for effect. “Understand that ninty percent of Stratton's business was completely legitimate: We didn't steal money from clients’ accounts, we didn't take fraudulent companies public, and, contrary to what the press might say, our clients could always sell if they wanted to.” I shrugged. “Of course, our sales practices left a lot to be desired, but whose didn't? Prudential-Bache's? Lehman Brothers?
“ Pru-Bache was busy ripping off grandmas and grandpas, and Lehman Brothers made them look like choirboys. In fact, it was the Lehman Brothers’ scripts that served as the blueprint for Stratton's!” I shook my head slowly. “The fraudulent side of Stratton occurred in tiny blips, and unless you were privy to those blips, everything seemed normal. But let me get back to Lester's office for a second.