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 relationships; 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 fashion, 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 ownership 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 fuck 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, fucking 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 shit 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 bastard might pop a hard-on and go after some of the sales assistants. They’re horny, the wee folk, and they can fuck 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 hell 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 shit.”
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 Forbesmagazine, 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.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 exposé in Forbesmagazine? 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 medievalnessof 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 trashing his toupee. “What’s with that cheap fucking rug of his?” Danny muttered. “It looks like a dead fucking 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 omertameant: 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.”
Ratholewas 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 ownership 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.