When she finally walked in the door, Monday afternoon, she said only a few words to me—something about the traffic being brutal on her way back from the Hamptons. Then she went upstairs to the kids’ rooms, smiling and laughing, and took them outside to the swings. She didn't seem to have a care in the world—making it a point, in fact, to amplify her cheeriness, ad nauseam.

She pushed them at an overly merry clip and then took her shoes off and went skipping around the backyard with them. It was as if our two lives no longer intertwined in any way whatsoever. Her very callousness had sent my spirits plunging to even lower depths. I felt as if I were in a dark hole, suffocating, with no escape.

I hadn't eaten, slept, laughed, or smiled in almost four days now, and, at this particular moment, with Monsoir's inane ramblings, I was contemplating slitting my own wrists.

Now he started speaking again. “I was only trying to cheer you up, boss. You are actually a berrylucky man. In my country they cut your hand off if they catch you stealing a loaf of bread.”

I cut him off. “Yeah, well, that's real fucking fascinating, Monsoir. Thanks for sharing.” And I took a moment to consider the pros and cons of Islamic justice. I came to the quick conclusion that, given my current circumstances, it would be a mixed bag for me. On the plus side, the Duchess wouldn't be acting so tough if I could force her to wear one of those head-to-toe burkas around town; it would stop that blond head of hers from sticking out like a fucking peacock. Yet, on the minus side, the Islamic penalty for white-collar crime and serial whoremongering had to be pretty severe. My kids and I had recently watched Aladdin,and they were ready to cut the poor kid's hand off for stealing a ten-cent grapefruit. Or was it a loaf of bread? Either way, Ihad stolen over a hundred million bucks, and I could only imagine what the Islamic penalty was for that.

Although, had I really stolenanything? I mean, this word stolenwas somewhat of a mischaracterization, wasn't it? On Wall Street we weren't actually thieves, were we? We simply talked people out of their money; we didn't actually steal itfrom them! There was a difference. The crimes we committed were softcrimes—like churning and burning, and trading on inside information, and garden-variety tax evasion. They were technicalviolations more than anything; it wasn't blatant thievery.

Or was it? Well, maybe it was… maybe it was. Perhaps I hadtaken things to a new level. Or at least the newspapers thought so.

By now the limousine was making its way over the great arc of the Triborough Bridge, and I could see the gleaming skyline of Manhattan off to my left. On clear days, like today, the buildings seemed to rise up to heaven. You could literally feel the weight of them. There was no doubt that Manhattan was the center of the financial universe, a place where movers and shakers could move and shake, where Masters of the Universe could congregate like Greek gods. And every last one of them was as crooked as me!

Yes, I thought, I was no different than any other man who owned a brokerage firm—from the blue-blooded WASP bastard who ran JPMorgan to the hapless white-bread schnook who ran Butt-Fuck Securities (in Butt-Fuck, Minnesota), we all cut a few corners. We had to,after all, if nothing more than to stay even with the competition. Such was the nature of contemporary perfection on Wall Street if you wanted to be a true power broker.

So, in reality, none of this was my fault. It was Joe Kennedy'sfault! Yes, he had started this terrible wave of stock manipulation and corporate chicanery. Back in the thirties, Old Joe had been the original Wolf of Wall Street, slashing and burning anyone in his path. In fact, he'd been one of the chief instigators of the Great Crash of ‘29, which plunged the United States into the Great Depression. He and a small handful of fabulously Wealthy Wolves had taken advantage of an unsuspecting public—making tens of millions of dollars short-selling stocks that were already on the verge of collapse, causing them to plummet that much lower.

And what had his punishment been? Well, unless I was a bit off on my history, he became the first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The audacity!Yes, the stock market's chief crook had become its chief watchdog. And all the while, even as he served as chairman, he continued to slash and burn from behind the scenes, making millions more.

I was no different from anybody else—no damn different!

“You're different than everybody else,” said Gregory J. O'Connell, my nearly seven-foot-tall criminal lawyer. “That's your problem.” He was sitting behind his fabulous mahogany desk, leaning back in his fabulous high-backed leather chair, and holding a copy of my not-so-fabulous indictment. He was a good-looking man, in his late thirties or early forties, with dark-brown hair and a very square jaw. He bore a striking resemblance to Tom Selleck from Magnum, P.I.,although he seemed much taller to me. In fact, leaning back the way he was, his head and torso seemed a mile long. (Actually, he was only six-four, although anyone over six-three seemed seven feet tall to me.)

Magnum plowed on: “Or at least that's how the government views you, as well as your friends in the press, who can't seem to get enough of you.” His voice was a deep tenor, his advice offered in the same theatrical way Enrico Caruso might offer it, if he were so inclined. “I hate to say it,” continued the towering tenor, “but you've become the poster child for small-stock fraud, Jordan. That's why the judge set your bail at ten million, to make an example of you.”

With a hiss: “Oh, really? Well it's all fucking bullshit, Greg! Every last drop of it!” I popped out of my black leather armchair, elevating myself to his eye level. “Everyone on Wall Street's a crook, youknow that!” I cocked my head to the side and narrowed my eyes suspiciously. “I mean, what kind of lawyer are you, anyway? I'm fucking innocent, for Chrissake! Completely fucking innocent!”

“I know you are,” said my friend and lawyer of four years. “And I'm Mother Teresa, on my way to Rome for a pilgrimage. And Nick over there”—he raised his chin toward the room's third occupant, his partner Nick De Feis, who was sitting in the black leather armchair next to mine—”is Mahatma Gandhi. Isn't that right, Nick?”

“It's Mohandas,” replied Nick, who had graduated at the top his class at Yale. He was about the same age as Greg and had an IQ^ around seven thousand. He had short dark hair, intense eyes, a calm demeanor, and a slender build. About my height, he was a greater wearer of blue pinstripe suits, heavily starched collars, and WASPy wingtip shoes, the sum of which made him look very intelligent. “Mahatma's not actually a name,” continued the Yale-man. “It's Sanskrit for great soul, in case you were wondering. Mohandas was—”

I cut him off with: “Who gives a fuck, Nick? I mean, sweet Jesus! I'm facing life in prison and you two bastards are jabbering away in Sanskrit!” I walked over to a floor-to-ceiling plate-glass window that shoved an awesome view of the concrete jungle of Manhattan down your throat. I stared out the window blankly, wondering how the fuck I ended up here—and knowing exactly how.

We were on the twenty-sixth floor of an art-deco-style office building that rose up sixty stories above Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. It was an area of Manhattan known as Bryant Park, although it used to be known as Needle Park, when two hundred heroin-addicted hookers, back in the seventies, had proudly called it home. But the park had long since been reclaimed and was now considered a fine place for working-class Manhattanites to enjoy a serene lunch, a place where they could sit on green-slat benches and breathe in the noxious fumes of a hundred thousand passing automobiles and listen to the blaring horns of twenty thousand immigrant cabbies. I looked down at the park, but all I could see was a swath of green grass and some ant-size people, none of whom, I figured, were wearing ankle bracelets. I found that very depressing.