So now I owned the yacht Nadine,which was 167 feet of floating heartache. The problem was that the boat was old, originally built for famed designer Coco Chanel back in the early 1960s. In consequence, the thing was noisy as hell and constantly breaking down. Like most yachts of that era, there was enough teakwood adorning the three massive decks to keep the crew of twelve on their hands and knees, with varnish brushes, from morning until night. Every moment I was on the boat it reeked of varnish, which made me nauseous.
Ironically, when the yacht was built it was only 120 feet long. But then the previous owner, Bernie Little, decided to extend it to make room for a helicopter. And Bernie—well, Bernie was the cunning sort of bastard who knew a sucker when he saw one. He quickly convinced me to buy the yacht after I’d chartered it a few times, using my love for Captain Marc to seal the deal (he gave me Captain Marc with the boat). Shortly thereafter, Captain Marc convinced me to build a jet-powered seaplane from scratch—his theory being that the two of us were avid scuba divers and we could fly the seaplane to uncharted waters and find fish that had never been hunted before. He’d said, “The fish will be so stupid we’ll be able to pet them before we spear them!” It was a rather sexy prospect, I’d thought, so I gave him the green light to build it. The budget was $500,000, which quickly turned into a million.
But when we tried craning the seaplane onto the upper deck, we realized that the deck wasn’t big enough. What with the Bell Jet helicopter, the six Kawasaki Jet Skis, the two Honda motorcycles, the fiberglass diving board and water slide—all of which were already on the top deck—there would no room for the helicopter to take off and land without colliding with the seaplane. I was in so deep with all this crap that I had no choice but to put the boat back in the shipyard and have it extended once more, for a cost of $700,000.
So the front had been pulled forward; the back had been pushed back; the yacht now looked like a 167-foot rubber band on the verge of snapping.
I said to Alan, “I’ll tell you, I really love this boat. I’m glad I bought it.”
Alan nodded in agreement. “She’s a beauty!”
Captain Marc was waiting for me on the dock, looking as square as one of those Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots that Alan and I used to play with as kids. He was dressed in a white collared T-shirt and white boating shorts, both of which bore the Nadinelogo—two gold-colored eagle’s feathers bent around a royal-blue capital N.
Captain Marc said, “You got a bunch of phone calls, boss. One from Danny, who sounded higher than a kite, and then three more calls from a girl named Carolyn, with a heavy French accent. She said you need to call her right away, as soon as you get back to the boat.”
Immediately my heart began thumping inside my chest. Christ! Danny was supposed to meet Todd this morning and give him the million dollars! Shit!All at once a thousand thoughts went flashing through my brain. Had something gone wrong? Had they somehow gotten caught? Were they both in jail? No, that was impossible, unless they were being followed. But why would someone be following them? Or maybe Danny had showed up stoned and Todd had knocked him out and Carolyn was calling to apologize. No, that was ridiculous! Todd would call himself, wouldn’t he? Fuck!I had forgotten to tell Danny not to show up stoned!
I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself down. Maybe it was all just a coincidence. I smiled at Captain Marc and said, “Did Danny say anything?”
Captain Marc shrugged. “It was kinda hard to understand him, but he said to tell you that everything was cool.”
Alan said, “Is everything okay? You need me to do anything?”
“No, no,” I replied, breathing a sigh of relief. Alan, of course, having grown up in Bayside, knew Todd as well as I did. Still, I hadn’t told Alan what was going on. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him; there simply had been no reason to tell him. The only thing he was aware of was that I was going to need his brokerage firm, Monroe Parker, to buy a few million shares of Dollar Time from an unaffiliated overseas seller, which, perhaps, he assumed was me. But he had never asked (it would have been a serious breach of protocol). I calmly said, “I’m sure it’s nothing. I just gotta make a couple of phone calls. I’ll be downstairs in my bedroom.” With that I took a small hop off the edge of the wooden dock and landed on the yacht, which was tied alongside it, lengthwise. Then I went downstairs to the master suite and picked up the satellite phone and dialed Danny’s cell phone.
The phone rang three times. “Haaawoaaa?” muttered Danny, sounding like Elmer Fudd.
I looked at my watch: It was eleven-thirty. Unbelievable! He was stoned at eleven-thirty in the morning on a Wednesday, a workday! “Danny, what the fuck is wrong with you? Why are you so stoned at the office?”
“No, no, no! I zake off zaday”— take off today—“because I met Tazz”— Todd—“but doze you worry! It all go perfect! Iz done! Clean, no marks!”
Well, at least my worst fears were unfounded. “Who’s minding the store, Danny?”
“I leave Blockhead and Wigwam there. Iz fine! Mad Max there too.”
“Was Todd pissed at you, Danny?”
“Uh-huh,” he muttered. “He crazy bastard, zat lumberjack! He pull out gun and point it at me and tell me I lucky I your friend. He shouldn’t carry gun. Iz against the law!”
He pulled out a gun? In plain sight? That made no sense! Todd might be crazy, but he wasn’t reckless! “I don’t understand, Danny. He pulled out a gun in the street?”
“No, no! I give him briefcase in back of limo. We meet in Bay Terrace Zopping Zenter”— Shopping Center—“in za parking lot. It all go fine. I stay for only a second, then I drive away.”
Christ almighty! What a scene that must’ve been! Todd in a black stretch Lincoln limousine, Danny in a black Rolls-Royce convertible, side by side in the Bay Terrace Shopping Center, where the next-nicest car was bound to be a Pontiac!
Once more I asked, “Are you sure everything went okay?”
“Yes, I sure!” he said indignantly, to which I slammed the phone down right in his ear, not so much because I was pissed at him but because I was the ultimate hypocrite—finding it annoying to speak to a stoned fool when I was sober.
I was about to pick up the phone and dial Carolyn when the phone started ringing. I took a moment to regard the phone, and at that very moment I felt like Mad Max, my pulse quickening with each terrible ring. But rather than answering it, I simply cocked my head to the side and stared at it with contempt.
On the fourth ring someone picked it up. I waited…and prayed. A moment later I heard a menacing little beepand then the voice of Tanji, Captain Marc’s sexy girlfriend, saying, “It’s Carolyn Garret for you, Mr. Belfort, on line two.”
I paused for a brief moment to gather my thoughts and then picked up the handset. “Hey, Carolyn, what’s going on? Is everything all right?”
“Oh, shit—thanks God I finally find you! Jordan, Todd is in jail and—”
I cut her off immediately. “Carolyn, don’t say another word. I’m going to a pay phone and I’ll call you right back. Are you home?”
“Yes, I home. I wait right here for your call.”
“All right; don’t move. Everything will be fine, Carolyn. I promise you.”
I hung up the phone and sat down on the edge of the bed, in a state of disbelief. My mind was racing in a thousand different directions. I felt an odd feeling that I had never felt before. Todd was in jail. In fucking jail!How could it have happened? Would he talk?…No, of course not! If anyone lived by the code of omerta it was Todd Garret! Besides, how many years did he really have to live? He had a fucking lumberjack’s heart beating inside him, for Chrissake! He was always saying how he was living on borrowed time, wasn’t he? Perhaps a trial could be delayed until he was already dead. Immediately I regretted thinking any such thought, although I had to admit there was truth to it.