Channy looked up from her construction project and stared me down with those big blue eyes she’d inherited from her mother, and she said, “No, just leave him in the hospital.” Then she turned back to her blocks.
I sat down next to the baby genius and gave her a gentle kiss on the cheek. She smelled clean and fresh, just the way a little girl should. She was a little more than two years old now, and her hair was a glorious shade of chestnut brown and fine as corn silk. It went down past her shoulder blades, and there were tiny curls on the bottom. I found the mere sight of her touching beyond belief. “Listen, thumbkin, we can’t leave him at the hospital; he’s part of the family now. Carter’s your baby brother, and the two of you are gonna be best friends!”
With a shrug: “No, I don’t think so.”
“Well, I have to go to the hospital now and pick him and Mommy up, so either way he’s coming home, thumbkin. Just remember that Mommy and I still love you just as much. There’s enough love to go around for everybody.”
“I know,” she replied nonchalantly, still focusing on her construction project. “You can bring him. It’s okay.”
Very impressive, I thought. With a simple okay she had now accepted the new addition to the family.
Rather than going directly to the hospital, I had to make one quick stop along the way. It was an impromptu business meeting at a restaurant called Millie’s Place, in the tony suburb of Great Neck, about a five-minute car ride from Long Island Jewish. My plan was to blow out of the meeting quickly and then pick up Carter and the Duchess and head out to Westhampton. I was running a few minutes late, and as the limo pulled up I could see Danny’s boiling white teeth through the restaurant’s plate-glass window. He was sitting at a circular table, accompanied by the Chef, Wigwam, and a crooked lawyer named Hartley Bernstein, whom I was rather fond of. Hartley’s nickname was the Weasel, because he was the spitting image of a rodent. In fact, he could have been a Hollywood stunt double for the comic book character BB Eyes from Dick Tracy.
Although Millie’s Place wasn’t open for breakfast, the restaurant’s owner, Millie, had agreed to open the restaurant early to accommodate us. That was appropriate, considering that Millie’s Place was where the Strattonites would come after each new issue to drink and eat and fuck and suck and drop and snort and do whatever else Strattonites did—and it was all done courtesy of the firm, which would receive a bill, between $25,000 and $100,000, depending on how much damage was done.
As I approached the table I noticed a fifth person sitting there: Jordan Shamah, Stratton’s recently appointed Vice President. He was a childhood friend of Danny’s and his nickname was the Undertaker, because his rise to power had little to do with his performance and more to do with his undermining every last soul who’d stood in his way. The Undertaker was short and pudgy, and his primary undertaking method was good old-fashioned backstabbing, although he was also adept at character assassination and rumormongering.
I exchanged a quick round of Mafia-style hugs with my erstwhile partners-in-crime and then settled down in an armchair and poured myself a cup of coffee. The goal of the meeting was a sad one: to convince Danny to close down Stratton Oakmont, using the Cockroach Theory, which meant that before he actually closed Stratton he would first open a series of smaller brokerage firms—each of them owned by a front man—and then he would divide the Strattonites into small groups and shift them to the new firms. Once the process was complete, he would close Stratton and move himself to one of the new firms, where he could run it from behind the scenes, under the guise of being a consultant.
It was the generally accepted way for brokerage firms under regulatory heat to stay one step ahead—essentially, closing down and reopening under a different name, thereby starting the process of making money and fighting the regulators all over again. It was like stepping on a cockroach and squashing it, only to find ten new ones scurrying in all directions.
Anyway, given Stratton’s current problems, it was the appropriate course of action, but Danny didn’t subscribe to the Cockroach Theory. Instead, he had developed his own theory, which he referred to as Twenty Years of Blue Skies. According to thistheory, all Stratton had to do was get past its current wave of regulatory hurdles, and it could stay in business for twenty more years. It was preposterous! Stratton had a year left at most. By now all fifty states were circling above Stratton like vultures over a wounded carcass, and the NASD, the National Association of Securities Dealers, had joined the party too.
But Danny was in complete denial. In fact, he had become a Wall Street version of Elvis in his final days—when his handlers would cram his enormous bulk into a white leather jumpsuit and push him onstage to sing a few songs. Then they would drag him back off before he passed out from heat exhaustion and Seconals. According to Wigwam, Danny was now climbing on top of desks during sales meetings and smashing computer monitors onto the floor and cursing the regulators. Obviously, the Strattonites ate this sort of shit up, so Danny was now kicking it up a notch—pulling down his pants and pissing on stacks of NASD subpoenas, to thunderous applause.
Wigwam and I locked eyes, so I motioned with my chin, as if to say, “Offer up your two cents.” Wigwam nodded confidently and said, “Listen, Danny, the truth is I don’t know how much longer I can even get deals through. The SEC’s been playing four-corners defense, and it’s taking six months to get anything approved. If we start working on a new firm now, I could be in business by the end of the year—doing deals for allof us.”
Danny’s reply wasn’t exactly what Wigwam had hoped for. “Let me tell you something, Wigwam. Your motives are so obvious it’s fucking nauseating. There’s lots of time left before we need to consider cockroaching it, so why don’t you take your fucking rug off and stay awhile.”
“You know what, Danny? Go fuck yourself!” snapped Wigwam, running his fingers through his hair, trying to make it look more natural. “You’re so drugged out all the time you don’t even know which way is up anymore. I’m not wasting my life away while you drool in the office like a fucking imbecile.”
The Undertaker saw an opportunity to put a hatchet in Wigwam’s back. “That’s not true,” argued the Undertaker. “Danny doesn’t drool in the office. Maybe he slurs once in a while, but even then he’s always in control.” Now the Undertaker paused, searching for a spot to inject his first dose of embalming fluid. “And you shouldn’t be one to talk, by the way. You spend your whole day chasing around that smelly slut Donna, with her putrid armpits.”
I was fond of the Undertaker; he was a real company guy—way too dumb to actually think for himself, expending most of his mental energy conjuring up devilish rumors about those he was looking to bury. But in this particular instance his motives were obvious: He had a hundred customer complaints against him, and if Stratton went under he would never be able to get registered again.
I said, “All right, enough of this shit—please!” I shook my head in disbelief; Stratton was totally out of control. “I gotta get to the hospital. I’m only here because I want the best for everyone. I personally couldn’t care less whether or not Stratton pays me another dime. But I do have other interests—selfish interests, I admit—and they have to do with all the arbitrations being filed. A lot of them are naming me, in spite of the fact that I’m not with the firm anymore.” I looked directly at Danny. “You’re in the same position as me, Dan, and my sense is that even if there are Twenty Years of Blue Skies ahead, the arbitrations aren’t gonna stop.”