The Wolf of Wall Street (31 page)

“Yeah, sure.”
Just hand over the Ludes, you fat fuck!
“Call Danny’s assistant and she’ll take care of it, right, Dan?”

“Absolutely,” replied Danny through clenched teeth. On his face was a look that said, “Hand over the fucking Lemmons or suffer the consequences!”

Fifteen minutes later, Alan finally handed over the Ludes. I took one out and examined it. It was perfectly round, just larger than a dime, and it had the thickness of a Honey Nut Cheerio. It was snow-white…very clean-looking…and had a magnificent sheen, which served as visible reminder that in spite of it resembling a Bayer aspirin, it was the furthest thing from it. On one side of the pill, the brand name, Lemmon 714, was etched in thick grooves. On the other side was a thin line that ran the full diameter of the pill. Around the pill’s circumference were the trademark beveled edges.

Chemical-tob said, “They’re the real deal, Jordan. Whatever you do, don’t take more than one. They’re not like the Palladins; they’re much stronger.”

I assured him I wouldn’t…and, ten minutes later, Danny and I were well on the road to paradise. Each of us had swallowed one Real Real, and we were now in my basement gym, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling mirrors. The gym was packed with state-of-tha-art Cybex equipment and enough dumbbells and barbells and benches and squat racks to impress Arnold Schwarzenegger. Danny was walking on a motorized treadmill at a brisk pace; I was on the StairMaster, climbing, as if Agent Coleman were chasing me.

I said to Danny, “Nothing kicks in a Quaalude better than exercise, right?”

“Absa-fuckin-lutely!” exclaimed Danny. “It’s all in the metabolism; the faster, the better.” He reached over and picked up a white porcelain sake cup. “And this is genius, by the way. Drinking hot sake after consuming a real Lemmon is inspirational. Like pouring gasoline on a raging fire.”

I grabbed my own sake cup and reached over to clink cups with Danny. Danny tried too, but the two pieces of equipment were six feet apart, and we found ourselves just out of reach.

“Nice try,” said Danny, giggling.

“At least I get an A for effort!” I giggled back.

The two giggling idiots toasted each other in the air and downed the sake.

Just then the door swung open, and there she was: the Duchess of Bay Ridge, in her lime-green riding ensemble. She took one aggressive step forward and struck a pose, with her head cocked to one side and her arms folded beneath her breasts and her legs crossed at the ankles and her back slightly arched. Then she narrowed her eyes suspiciously, and she said, “What are you two retards doing?”

Christ! An unexpected complication! “I thought you were going out with Hope tonight?” I asked accusingly.

“Ahhh…ahhh…chooo!”
sneezed my aspiring horseback rider, giving up her pose. “My allergies were so bad I had…had…
ahhhh chooo
!” sneezed the Duchess once more. “I had to cancel on Hope.”

“Bless you, young Duchess!” said Danny, using my wife’s pet name.

The Duchess’s reply: “Call me Duchess again, Danny, and I’ll pour that fucking sake over your head.” Then, to me: “Come inside, I want to talk to you about something.” With that, she spun on her heel and headed to the other side of the basement, to a wraparound couch. It was just across from the indoor racquetball court, which had recently been converted into a clothing showroom in support of her latest aspiration: maternity designer.

Danny and I followed dutifully. I whispered in his ear: “You feel anything yet?”

“Nothing,” he whispered back.

The Duchess said, “I was speaking to Heather Gold today, and she thinks it’s the perfect time to get Chandler started horseback riding. So I want to buy her a pony.” She nodded a single time, to emphasize her point. “Anyway, they have one there that’s so cute, and it’s not too expensive either.”

“How much?” I asked, taking a seat beside the Duchess and wondering how Chandler was going to ride a pony when she hadn’t even started walking yet.

“Only seventy thousand dollars!” answered a smiling Duchess. “Not bad, right?”

Well, I thought, if you’ll agree to have sex with me while I’m getting off on my Real Real, then I’ll gladly purchase this overpriced pony for you, but all I said was, “Sounds like a real fucking bargain. I didn’t even know they made ponies that expensive.” I rolled my eyes.

The Duchess assured me that they did, and then to reinforce her point she nuzzled up next to me so I could smell her perfume. “Please?” she said in an irresistible tone. “I’ll be your best friend.”

At that very moment, Janet came walking down the stairs with a great smile on her face. “Hey, everybody! What’s going on down here?”

I looked up at Janet and said, “Come downstairs and join the fucking party!” Obviously, she missed the sarcasm, and a moment later the Duchess had recruited Janet into her camp, and the two of them were now talking about how fine Chandler would look on horseback, in a cute little English riding ensemble, which the Duchess could have custom-made for God only knew how much.

Sensing an opportunity, I whispered to the Duchess that if she would come into the bathroom with me and allow me to bend her over the sink, I would be more than happy to make a special trip to Gold Coast Stables tomorrow and purchase the pony, just as soon as the eleven o’clock showing of
Gilligan’s Island
was finished, to which she whispered, “Now?” to which I nodded yes and said, “Please,” three times fast, at which point the Duchess smiled and agreed. The two of us excused ourselves for a moment.

With little fanfare, I bent her over the sink and plunged inside her without even the slightest bit of lubrication, to which she said, “OW!” and then she sneezed and coughed again. I said, “Bless you, my love!” then I pumped in and out, twelve times fast, and came inside her like a rocket. Soup to nuts, the whole thing had taken about nine seconds.

The Duchess turned her pretty little head around and said, “That’s it? You’re done?”

“Uh-huh,” I replied, rubbing my fingertips together and still feeling no tingles. “Why don’t you go upstairs and use your vibrator?”

Still bent over the sink, the Duchess said, “Why are you so anxious to get rid of me? I know you and Danny are up to something. What is it?”

“Nothing; it’s just business talk, sweetie. That’s it.”

“Fuck you!” replied an angry Duchess. “You’re lying, and I know it!” And with one swift move, she pushed off the sink with her elbows and I went flying backward and smashed into the bathroom door with a tremendous force. Then she pulled up her riding pants, sneezed, looked in the mirror for a second, fixed her hair, pushed me off to the side, and walked out.

Ten minutes later Danny and I were alone in the basement, still stone-cold sober. I shook my head gravely and said, “They’re so old they must’ve lost their potency. I think we should take another.”

We did, and thirty minutes later: nothing. Not even one fucking tingle!

“Can you imagine this shit?” said Danny. “Five hundred bucks a pill, and they’re duds! It’s criminal! Let me check the expiration date on the bottle.”

I tossed the bottle to him.

He looked at the label. “December ’81!” he exclaimed. “They’re expired!” He unscrewed the top and took out two more Lemmons. “They must’ve lost their potency. Let’s each take one more.”

Thirty minutes later we were devastated. We’d each taken three vintage Lemmons and hadn’t gotten so much as a tingle.

“Well, that’s about all she wrote!” I sputtered. “They’re officially duds.”

“Yeah,” agreed Danny. “Such is life, my friend.”

Just then, over the intercom, came the voice of Gwynne: “Mr. Belfort, it’s”—
iz
—“Bo Dietl on the phone.”

I picked up the receiver. “Hey, Bo, what’s going on?”

His reply startled me. “I need to speak to you right now,” he snapped, “but not on this phone. Go to a pay phone and call me at this number. You got something to write with?”

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Did you speak to Bar—”

Bo cut me off: “Not on this phone, Bo. But the short answer is yes, and I have some info for you. Now go grab a pen.”

A minute later I was inside my little white Mercedes, freezing my ass off. In my haste I had forgotten to put a coat on. It was absolutely frigid outside—couldn’t have been more than five degrees—and at seven p.m. at this time of winter, it was already dark out. I started the car and headed for the front gates. I made a left turn onto Pin Oak Court, surprised to see a long row of cars parked on either side of the street. Apparently someone on my block was having a party. Wonderful! I thought. I just spent $10,000 on the worst Ludes in history, and someone is having a fucking celebration!

My destination was the pay phone at Brookville Country Club. It was only a few hundred yards up the road, and thirty seconds later I was pulling into the driveway. I parked in front of the clubhouse and walked up a half dozen red-brick steps, passing through a set of white Corinthian columns.

Inside the clubhouse were a row of pay phones against a wall. I picked one up, dialed the number Bo had given me, then punched in my credit-card number. After a few rings came the terrible news. “Listen, Bo,” said Bo, from another pay phone, “I just got a call from Barsini, and he told me you’re the target of a full-blown money-laundering investigation. Apparently this guy Coleman thinks you got twenty million bucks over in Switzerland. He has an inside source over there that’s feeding him information. Barsini wouldn’t get specific, but he made it sound like you got caught up in someone else’s deal, like you didn’t start off as the main target but now Coleman’s made you the main target. Your home phone’s probably tapped, and so is your beach house. Talk to me, Bo, what’s going on?”

I took a deep breath, trying to keep myself calm and trying to figure out what to say to Bo…
but what was there to say?
That I had millions of dollars in the bogus account of Patricia Mellor and that my own mother-in-law had smuggled the money there for me? Or that Todd Garret had gotten popped because Danny was dumb enough to drive his car on Ludes? What was the upside of telling him that? None that I could think of. So all I said was, “I don’t have any money in Switzerland. It must be some sort of mistake.”

“What?” asked Bo. “I couldn’t understand what you said. Say it again?”

Frustrated, I repeated: “I says, I zon’t has azy muzzy ozzer in Swizzaziz!”

Sounding incredulous, Bo said, “What are you, stoned? I can’t understand a word you’re fucking saying!” Then, suddenly, in an urgent tone, he said, “Listen to me, Jordan—don’t get behind the wheel of your car! Tell me where you are and I’ll send Rocco for you! Where are you, buddy? Talk to me!”

All at once a warm feeling came rising up my brain stem, as a pleasant tingling sensation went ricocheting through every molecule of my body. The phone receiver was still at my ear and I wanted to tell Bo to have Rocco come pick me up at the Brookville Country Club, but I couldn’t get my lips to move. It was as if my brain was sending out signals but they were being intercepted—or scrambled. I felt paralyzed. And I felt wonderful. I stared at the shiny metal face of the pay phone and cocked my head to the side, trying to find my own reflection…
How pretty the phone looked!
…So shiny it was!…And then all at once the phone seemed to be growing more distant…What was happening?…Where was the phone going?…
Oh, shit!…
I was falling backward now, tipping over like a tree that had just been chopped down….
TIMBER!
…and then…
BOOM!
I was lying flat on my back, in a state of semiconsciousness, staring up at the clubhouse ceiling. It was one of those white Styrofoam dropped ceilings, the sort you find in an office. Pretty chintzy for a country club! I thought. These fucking WASPs were cutting corners on their own ceiling!

I took a deep breath and checked for broken bones. Everything seemed to be in working order. The Real Reals had protected me from harm. It had taken almost ninety minutes for these little fuckers to kick in, but once they had…
WOW!
I had gone straight past the tingle phase and right into the drool phase. Actually, I had discovered a new phase, somewhere between the drool phase and a state of unconsciousness. It was the…what was it? I needed a name for this phase. It was the cerebral palsy phase! Yes! My brain would no longer send clear signals to my musculoskeletal system. What a wonderful new phase! My brain was sharp as a tack, but I had no control of my body. Too good! Too good!

With a great deal of effort, I craned my neck and saw the receiver still swinging back and forth on its shiny metallic cord. I thought I could hear Bo’s voice screaming, “Tell me where you are and I’ll send Rocco!” although it was probably my imagination playing tricks on me.
Fuck it!
I thought. What was the point of trying to get back on the phone, anyway? I had officially lost the power of speech.

After five minutes on the floor, it hit me that Danny must be in the same condition. Oh, Jesus! The Duchess must be flipping out right now—wondering where I’d gone! I needed to get home. It was only a couple hundred yards to the estate, literally a straight shot. I could make the drive, couldn’t I? Or perhaps I should walk home. But, no, it was too cold for that. I would probably die of frostbite.

I rolled onto all fours and tried standing up, but it was no use. Every time I lifted my hands off the carpet I tipped over to the side. I would have to
crawl
back to the car. But what was so bad about that? Chandler crawled, and she seemed to be fine with it.

When I reached the front door I propped myself onto my knees and grabbed the doorknob. I pulled open the door and crawled outside. There was my car…ten stairs down. Try as I might, my brain refused to let me crawl down the stairs, scared at the very possibility of what might happen. So I lay down flat on my stomach and tucked my hands beneath my chest and turned myself into a human barrel and began rolling down the stairs…slow at first…in complete control…and then…oh, shit!…There I go!…Faster…faster…
b-boom…b-boom…b-boom
…and I hit the asphalt parking lot with a mighty
thud.