The Blockhead nodded. “No problem,” he said happily. “Victor listens to me. I mean, if you only knew how…”

The Blockhead started spewing out blockheaded nonsense, but I immediately tuned out. In fact, by the look in his eyes, I knew he hadn’t grasped my meaning at all. In point of fact—it was I, not Victor, who had the most to lose if Judicate went belly up. I was the largest shareholder, owning a bit more than three million shares, while Victor held only stock options, which were worthless at the current stock price of two dollars. Still, as an owner of stock,my stake was worth $6 million—although the two-dollar share price was misleading. After all the company was performing so poorly that you couldn’t actually sell the stock without driving the price down into the pennies.

Unless, of course, you had an army of Strattonites.

Yet there was one hitch to this exit strategy—namely, that my stock wasn’t eligible for sale yet. I had bought my shares directly from Judicate under SEC Rule 144, which meant there was a two-year holding period before I could legally resell it. I was only one month shy of the two-year mark, so all I needed was Victor to keep things afloat a tiny bit longer. But this seemingly simple task was proving to be far more difficult than I’d anticipated. The company was bleeding cash like a hemophiliac in a rosebush.

In fact, now that Victor’s options were worthless, his sole compensation was a salary of $100,000 a year, which was a paltry sum compared to what his peers were making upstairs. And unlike the Blockhead, Victor was no fool; he was keenly aware that I would use the power of the boardroom to sell my shares as soon as they became eligible, and he was also aware that he could get left behind after they were sold—reduced to nothing more than the chairman of a worthless public company.

He had intimated this concern to me via the Blockhead, who he’d been using as a puppet since junior high school. And I had explained to Victor, more than once, that I had no intention of leaving him behind, that I would make him whole no matter what—even if it meant making him money as my rathole.

But the Depraved Chinaman couldn’t be convinced of that, not for more than a few hours at a time. It was as if my words went in one ear and out the other. The simple fact was that he was a paranoid son of a bitch. He had grown up an oversize Chinaman amid a ferocious tribe of savage Jews. In consequence, he suffered from a massive inferiority complex. He now resented all savage Jews, especially me, the most savage Jew of all. To date, I had outsmarted him, outwitted him, and outmaneuvered him.

It was out of his very ego, in fact, that Victor hadn’t become a Strattonite in the early days. So he went to Judicate instead. It was his way of breaking into the inner circle, a way to save face for not making the right decision back in 1988, when the rest of his friends had sworn loyalty to me and had become the first Strattonites. In Victor’s mind, Judicate was merely a way station to insinuate himself back into the queue, so that one day I would tap him on the shoulder and say, “Vic, I want you to open up your own brokerage firm, and here’s the money and expertise to do it.”

It was what every Strattonite dreamed of and something I touched upon in all my meetings—that if you continued to work hard and stay loyal, one day I’d tap you on the shoulder and set you up in business.

And then you would get truly rich.

I had done this twice so far: once with Alan Lipsky, my oldest and most trusted friend, who now owned Monroe Parker Securities; and a second time, with Elliot Loewenstern, another long-time friend, who now owned Biltmore Securities. Elliot had been my partner back in my ice-hustling days. During the summer, the two of us would go down to the local beach and hustle Italian ices blanket-to-blanket, and make a fortune. We would scream out our sales pitch as we carried around forty-pound Styrofoam coolers, running from the cops when they chased after us. And while our friends were either goofing off or working menial jobs for $3.50 an hour, we were earning $400 a day. Each summer we would each save twenty thousand dollars and use it during the winter months to pay our way through college.

In any event, both firms—Biltmore and Monroe Parker—were doing phenomenally well, earning tens of millions a year, and they were each paying me a hidden royalty of $5 million a year just for setting them up.

It was a hefty sum, $5 million, and in truth it had little to do with setting them up. In point of fact, they paid me out of loyalty, and out of respect. And at the very crux of it, what held it all together was the fact that they still considered themselves Strattonites. And I considered them such too.

So there it was. As the Blockhead stood in front of me, still rambling on about how loyal the Chinaman would be, I knew otherwise. How could someone who harbored a deep-seated resentment toward all savage Jews ever stay loyal to the Wolf of Wall Street? He was a man of grudges, Victor, a man who held every last Strattonite in contempt.

It was clear: There was no logical reason to back the Depraved Chinaman, which led to another problem—namely, that there was no way to stop him. All I could do was delay him. And if I delayed too long, I ran the risk of him doing it without me—without my blessing, so to speak, which would set a dangerous precedent to the rest of the Strattonites, especially if he succeeded.

It was sad and ironic, I thought, how my power was nothing more than an illusion, how it would vanish quickly if I didn’t think ten steps ahead. I had no choice but to torture myself over every decision, to read infinite detail into everyone’s motives. I felt like a twisted game theorist, who spent the better part of his day lost in thought—considering all the moves and countermoves and outcomes thereof. It was emotionally taxing, my life, and after five long years it seemed to be getting the best of me. In fact, the only time my mind was quiet now was when I was either high as a kite or inside the luscious loins of the luscious Duchess.

Nevertheless, the Depraved Chinaman couldn’t be ignored. To start a brokerage firm required a minuscule amount of capital, perhaps half a million at most, which was peanuts compared to what he’d make in the first few months alone. The Blockhead himself could finance the Chinaman, if he so desired, although that would be an overt act of war—if I could ever prove it, which would be difficult.

In reality, the only thing holding Victor back was his lack of confidence—or his simple unwillingness to put his enormous Chinese ego and his tiny Chinese balls on the line. He wanted assurances, the Chinaman; he wanted direction, and emotional support, and protection against short-sellers—and, most importantly, he wanted large blocks of Stratton new issues, which were Wall Street’s hottest.

He would want all these things until he could figure them out on his own.

Then he would want no more.

That would take six months, I figured, at which point he would turn on me. He would sell back all the stock I’d given him, which would put unnecessary pressure on the Strattonites, who would be forced to buy it. Ultimately, his selling would drive the stocks down, which would lead to customer complaints and, most importantly, a boardroom full of unhappy Strattonites. He would then prey upon that unhappiness—using it to try to steal my Strattonites. He would accompany it with a false promise of a better life at Duke Securities. Yes, I thought, there was something to be said for being small and nimble, as he would be. It would be difficult to defend against such an attack. I was the lumbering giant, vulnerable at the periphery.

So the answer was to deal with the Chinaman from a position of strength. I was big, all right, and despite being vulnerable at the periphery I was tough as nails at the center. So it would be from the very center that I’d strike. I would agree to back Victor, and I would lull him into a false sense of security, then, when he least expected it, I would unleash a first strike against him of such ferocity that it would leave him destitute.