CHAPTER 24

THE FATE GOD STRIKES BACK

Upon hanging up with Magnum, I called Pat Mancini, who, not surprisingly, had just received a phone call from the Bastard, asking if he'd given me authorization to travel to Atlantic City. Pat, of course, told him that he hadn't, to which the Bastard suggested that he inform Judge Gleeson of my bail violation.

Pat told him that he would think about it.

Thankfully he told me that he wouldn't; in fact, he actually felt bad for me, he said. Yes, I was definitely a schmuck for taking a helicopter to Atlantic City, but in a way I had been set up for the fall. “There's only so long a man can stay under house arrest before he fucks up,” Pat explained. “It's like the old saying: You leave a man just enough rope to hang himself.”

Before he hung up the phone, he said something that I knew I would be hearing a lot for a few weeks, namely: “For a smart guy, Jordan, you do some pretty stupid things!” Then he hung up on me.

I passed the rest of the weekend in a state of relative calm. Then, on Monday morning, all hell broke loose.

It started when Mancini called Magnum to say that he had received a scathing letter from the Bastard, demanding that Pat write a letter to Gleeson, informing him of my trip to Atlantic City. And, just for good measure, the Bastard wrote that all the high points of my trip—the young girl, the bag of cash, the chopper-must be included in the letter to Gleeson, lest Pat be accused of painting a misleading picture for the judge.

Magnum placed an emergency phone call to Joel—to beg him to rescind the letter to Mancini—only to get a recorded message that went something like: “Hi, this is Joel Cohen, and I'm no longer with the U.S. Attorney's Office. I will be on vacation for the next two weeks…”

Yes, the Bastard had vanished, and this was his revenge.

He had wanted to revoke my bail over the Dave Beall incident but had been overruled. So this was payback, and it was a bitch!

Magnum, however, was not ready to go down without a fight, so he hopped on the subway and went down to the U.S. Attorney's Office to meet with Alonso, who agreed to call Mancini and tell him that he could handle this “in house.” My restrictions would be tightened for a few months, and then ultimately Alonso would make a motion before Gleeson to have my ankle bracelet removed—getting me out of Mancini's hair once and for all.

Sure, Mancini said, that would be wonderful. The only problem was that he had just hit the send button on the e-mail, and right now, at this very moment, Judge Gleeson was probably reading the letter, which did indeed include all the dirty details. When Magnum informed me of this, I dropped the phone, ran to the toilet, and vomited. Then I ran back to the phone and asked Magnum what this meant—which is to say, was my goose cooked for sure now?

He told me that it wasn't; there was still a fifty-fifty shot that Gleeson would read the letter and take no action. After all, the letter had not been accompanied by a request for a hearing. With a little bit of luck, Gleeson would just shake his head in disbelief, lose a bit of respect for me, and then move on with his day.

No such luck.

On Thursday morning, at 8:30 a.m. sharp, I heard a very disturbing sound: the phone ringing.

Oh, Jesus!I thought. I looked to my left, and there was KGB. As always, she was sleeping soundly, her blond Soviet head poking out from beneath the white silk comforter.

It was Magnum. His first few words were lost on me, but his next few words weren't: “Unfortunately, I just received a fax from Gleeson, and he's ordered a hearing.”

“When?” I asked, in a state far beyond panic.

“Tomorrow morning, ten a.m.”

I stole a glance at KGB. Well, it was nice knowing you! I thought.

“I guess I'm dead fucking meat,” I said rather calmly.

“Not necessarily,” he replied. “I think there's still a way out of this. The key is that we need to approach Gleeson as a united front. I already spoke to both Mancini and Alonso. Mancini will be there too, tomorrow, and he promised he'd stand up for you. He's gonna say that it was a misunderstanding and that, in hismind, you can still be trusted to live up to your bail restrictions.”

“And what about Alonso? What's he gonna say?”

“Like I told you, when it comes to AUSAs, Dan Alonso is about as good as they get. So, in spite of him never meeting you before, he's willing to stand up for you too. I'm meeting with him later today, and we're going to work out a package that we can sell to Gleeson. There'll be some severe restrictions for a while—no travel, in your house by six p.m., no more late nights in the city—but it's much better than going to jail right now, right?”

“Yeah, it is,” I replied. “And what are the chances of Gleeson going along with this?”

“Close to a hundred percent,” Magnum said confidently. “It's very rare that a judge goes against the recommendation of the U.S. attorney. And the fact that Mancini's on board pretty much seals the deal.”

Excellent, I thought. There was no reason to worry.

The United States Courthouse at 225 Cadman Plaza was enveloped by an irreducible despair. No one, it seemed, really wanted to be there—from the lawyers, to the defendants, to the clerks, to the marshals, to the court reporters, to the people who swept the building's six sprawling floors, to the judges themselves. Everyone looked either bored, desperate, or on the verge of tears. And while you might find an occasional smile from someone who had just been acquitted of a criminal charge, for every broad smile there was a frown. After all, for every winner there was a loser.

Except in my case.

It was Friday morning, a few minutes before ten, and my lawyers and I were standing in a long, broad hallway outside Judge Gleeson's courtroom. Save a few wooden benches against the walls, the hallway was completely bare. The benches looked about as comfortable as the linoleum floor. Between the benches were four soundproof doors, two on each side, and each leading into a separate courtroom.

Just then Magnum looked down at the top of my head and said, “Look, here comes Alonso now,” and he pointed to a tall, slender figure walking toward us. At first glance he looked more like a movie star than an assistant United States attorney. Tall, lean, good-looking, immaculately groomed, and possessing a surprisingly warm smile, he was everything the Bastard wasn't—namely, a picture of grace and gentility. He looked like the actor George Hamilton, without the tan.

“So you're Jordan Belfort,” said Dan Alonso, extending his hand for a shake. “You don't look capable of causing so much commotion!”

I smiled and shook his hand warmly, wondering if he was making some vague reference to my height. After all, he was every bit of six foot two, and Magnum's head was nearly scraping the twelve-foot-high cement ceiling. I took a step toward the Yale-man, for height-protection, and I said, “Well, looks can be deceiving, right?”

Alonso nodded and shook my hand firmly.

Magnum said, “I promise you, Alonso, this is the end of the commotion. Jordan has lost his desire to fly around in helicopters with bags of money. Right, Jordan?”

And don't forget about the underage girl, I thought. “Forever,” I said confidently. “I will never step foot in Atlantic City again. In fact, I have no desire to ever step foot in New Jerseyagain!”

“Who does?” reasoned the Yale-man.

Magnum said to Alonso, “I think this would be a good time to go through the particulars. I've already spoken to Jordan about his new restrictions, and he's totally fine with them. Right, Jordan?”