Alonso shook his head. “He won't get the chance, because I'm gonna do it first. And don't take it personally when I do; I'm going to be prettytough on you when you're up there. I won't pull any punches, especially when it comes to your personal life.” He cocked his head to one side. “You know what I'm referring to?”

I nodded sadly. “Yeah, what happened on the stairs with Nadine.”

He nodded back. “And what happened afterward too, with your daughter. I'm gonna bring up everything—all the dark stuff. And you can't try to minimize it or rationalize it. You just say, ‘Yes, I kicked my wife down the stairs,’ and, ‘Yes, I drove my car through a garage door with my daughter in the front passenger seat, unbuckled,’ because, trust me, if you do try to minimize it, Fischetti will rip you a new asshole during cross-examination. He'll say, ‘Oh, so what you're saying, Mr. Belfort, is that you didn'tactually kick your wife down a flight of stairs, because she was only on the third step as opposed to the top. And, wait, forgive me, Mr. Belfort, you didn't actually kickher; you pushedher, which is a whole other story. So, to sum it up, what you're saying is that it's all right for a man to push his wife down threeindividual steps and then risk his daughter's life by throwingher into the passenger seat of his ninety-thousand-dollar Mercedesand driving through a garage door while high on cocaine and Quaaludes?’” Alonso smiled. “You get the picture?”

“Yeah, I got it, but I don't want it.”

“None of us wants it,” he agreed, “but those are the facts we're stuck with.”

I nodded in resignation. Alonso continued: “But, on the bright side, we'll get to spend some time talking about how you went to rehab and got sober. And then you can also bring up how you go to high schools now and give antidrug lectures to the kids.” He smiled reassuringly. “Believe me, as long as you're honest, it'll work out fine. Drug addiction is a disease, so people will forgive you for it.” He shrugged. “Now, if only whoremongering were a disease too, then we would reallybe in business!” He started laughing. “Funny, right?”

“Yeah,” I said, smiling— fucking hysterical!I would have to admit, under oath, to banging a thousand hookers of all shapes and sizes. The only question was if it would end up in the news paper. It was just the sort of tawdry gossip that the New York Postlived for.

Alonso reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a fresh pack of Marlboros and a cheap Bic lighter. “You know, I don't make it a habit of breaking the law,” he said, “but in spite of this being a smoke-free building I'm gonna light up anyway.” And he did just that, taking a rather shallow, halfhearted pull that so much as said, “I'm not really a smoker; I just do this when I'm stressed out.”

I remained silent and let him smoke in peace. I understood this was important—to be able to partake in a simple manly pleasure without being interrupted by idle chatter. My father, one of the world's all-time great smokers, had explained this to me on numerous occasions. “Son,” he'd say, “if I want to kill myself with these fucking cancer sticks, then at least let me kill myself in fucking peace, for Chrissake!”

Alonso smiled at me and said, “Sooo… how are you, Jordan?”

I cocked my head to the side and stared at him for a moment. “How am I?” I asked. “Are you being sarcastic, Alonso?”

He turned the corners of his mouth down and shook his head slowly. “No, not at all. I just want to know how you are.”

I shrugged. “Well, it's been a long time since someone's asked me that, so I need to think about it for a second.” I paused for about a tenth of a second, then said, “Uh, I suck! How you doin’, Alonso?”

He ignored my last few words and said, “Things will get better; you just gotta give it some time. After the trial is over, we can make a motion to get your ankle bracelet taken off.” A brief pause, then: “I'm sure Gleeson will approve it once he hears you testify. It definitely comes through how remorseful you are.”

I nodded. “Well, I am remorseful. More than you can imagine.”

He nodded. “I know that; I've been doing this long enough to know when someone's full of shit. But that aside, you still haven't answered my question.”

“About what: How am I?”

“Yeah. How are you?”

I shrugged. “I got problems, Alonso. I'm facing years in jail, I'm engaged to a woman I'm not in love with, I have no career path, my kids live on the other side of the country, I'm wearing a fucking ankle bracelet, I've betrayed my closest friends, they've betrayed me, and, to top it all off, I'm on the verge of running out of money and I don't have a way to make any more right now.”

“You'll be rich again,” he said knowingly. “I don't think anyone in their right mind would bet against it.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, well, you're probably right about that, but I won't be rich for a long time. I'm in the middle of a bad luck streak, and until it runs its course, there's nothing I can do. Anyway, my real goal here is to move out to California to be near my kids. That's it. I swore an oath to my daughter that I would do that, and I'm not going to let her down. I'd like to move out there before I get sentenced. You think that's realistic?”

“Yeah, I think it is. I'll do what I can to help you, but you have to be patient for a while. The next year is going to be hectic; there are trials pending, indictments looming; a lot of things are still up in the air. But there should be a window toward the end. From a logistical standpoint, though, I don't know how much sense it makes to move before you do your time. I mean, what are you going to do: rent a house and then go to jail right after you rent it?”

I smiled and winked. “You bet your ass I am! Before I go to jail, I want my kids to know that I officially moved out to California; this way, they'll know I'll be coming back there when I get out. And I want to spend my last night of freedom with them in a house that's ours, not in a hotel. And we're all gonna sleep in the same bed that night, one of them under each arm.” I paused for a moment, relishing the thought. “That's how I want to spend my last night of freedom.”

Just then the door swung open, and in walked OCD. He took a few suspicious sniffs and then looked at the metal wastepaper basket, where Alonso had tossed his cigarette. Then he looked back at Alonso and said, “So how far did you guys get without me? It's getting kinda late here.”

With great enthusiasm, Alonso said, “No, we're still in the same spot. We got sidetracked.” Alonso compressed his lips, suppressing a cackle.

I suppressed my own cackle as the last traces of color left OCD's face.

Unlike Law & Order,where the excitement is heart-palpitating and the tension is so thick you can literally cut it with a knife, the real-life happenings in a federal courtroom are quite the opposite. Judge Gleeson, for example, sits high on his bench, sometimes looking interested, sometimes looking bored, occasionally looking amused—but always in complete control. There are no outbursts or arguments or people questioning the wisdom of his decisions or anything that might cause him to rise out of his chair and lean forward over his vast desk and point his finger and scream, “You're out of order, Counselor! Now sit back down or I'm holding you in contempt!”

I testified for three days—three unremarkable days—during which I found Fischetti to be fairly competent, but not overly so. Oh, he looked pretty spiffy, in his $2,000 gray silk suit and fancy gray necktie, but that was about it. His lines of questioning seemed boring and long-winded. If I had been sitting in the jury box, I would have fallen asleep.

Alonso, however, had been brilliant: organized, eloquent, persuasive, thorough. He had left Fischetti nowhere to go but in circles, double-talking and triple-talking, and the more he talked, the guiltier his client seemed. Danny testified too, as did a handful of others, although just who and how many I wasn't sure. The less I knew, the better, explained Alonso. I was not on trial, after all; I was only a witness.