Just then came the royal greeting committee. It was Maria, the fat cook, and her husband, Ignacio, a mean-spirited little butler, who at four-foot-eight was a shade taller than his wife. They were from Portugal and prided themselves on providing service in the formal, traditional way. I despised them because Gwynne despised them, and Gwynne was one of the few people who truly understood me—she and my children. Who knew if these two could be trusted? I would have to keep a close eye on them…and, if necessary, neutralize them.
“Good evening, Mr. Belfort,” said Maria and Ignacio in unison. Ignacio bowed formally and Maria curtsied. Then Ignacio added, “How are you this evening, sir?”
“Never better,” I muttered. “Where’s my loving wife?”
“She’s in town, shopping,” replied the cook.
“What a fucking surprise,” I snarled, walking past them. I was carrying a Louis Vuitton travel bag, loaded with dangerous drugs.
“Dinner will be served at eight,” said Ignacio. “Mrs. Belfort asked me to inform you that your guests will be here around seven-thirty, and if you could please be ready by then.”
Oh, fuck her, I thought. “Okay,” I sputtered. “I’ll be in the TV room; please don’t disturb me. I have important business to attend to.” With that, I went into the TV room, flicked on the Rolling Stones, and broke out the drugs. The Duchess had instructed me to be ready by seven-thirty. What the fuck did that mean? That I should be dressed in a fucking tuxedo—or top hat and tails? What was I, a fucking monkey? I was wearing gray sweatpants and a white T-shirt, and that was just fucking fine! Who the fuck paid for all this shit? Me—that’s who! And she had the nerve to be giving me orders!
Eight p.m., dinner is served! And who needs it? Give me Froot Loops and skim milk, not this chichi bullshit that Maria and the Duchess hold so dear. The dinner table was the size of a horseshoe pit. Still, the dinner guests weren’t all that bad, with the exception of the Duchess. She was sitting across from me, on the other side of the pit. She was so far away I needed an intercom to converse with her, which was probably a good thing. Admittedly, she was gorgeous. But trophy wives like the Duchess were a dime a dozen, and the good ones wouldn’t turn on me for no good reason.
Sitting to my right were Dave and Laurie Beall, who were up visiting from Florida. Laurie was a good blond egg. She knew her place in the general scheme of things, so she understood me. The only problem was that she was also under the influence of the Duchess, who’d crawled inside her very mind—planting subversive thoughts against me. So Laurie couldn’t be fully trusted.
Her husband, Dave, was another story. He could be trusted—more or less. He was a big country bumpkin—six-two, two hundred fifty pounds of solid muscle. When he was in college he worked as a bouncer. One day someone had mouthed off to him, and Dave punched him in the side of the head and knocked his eye out. Rumor had it that the guy’s eye was hanging by a couple of ligaments. Dave was an ex-Strattonite, who now worked at DL Cromwell. Tonight, I could count on him to repel intruders. In fact, he would do it with relish.
My other two guests were the Schneidermans, Scott and Andrea. Scott was a Bayside boy, although we hadn’t been friends growing up. He was a confirmed homosexual who’d gotten married for inexplicable reasons, although, if I had to guess, it was to have children, of which he now had one, a daughter. He, too, was an ex-Strattonite, although he’d never possessed the killer instinct. He was out of the business now. He was here for only one reason: He was my coke dealer. He had a connection at the airport and was getting me pure cocaine from Colombia. His wife was innocuous—a chubby brunette with only a few words to say, all of which were meaningless.
After four courses and two and a half hours of torturous conversation, it was finally eleven o’clock. I said to Dave and Scott, “Come on, guys, let’s go into the TV room and watch a movie.” I rose from my chair and headed for the TV room, with Dave and Scott in tow. I had no doubt the Duchess wanted to talk to me as little as I wanted to talk to her. And that was fine. Our marriage was basically over; it was only a matter of time now.
What happened next started with an inspired notion I had to divide up my cocaine stash into two separate snorting parties. The first party would commence now and consist of eight grams of powdered cocaine. It would take place here, in the TV room, and last for approximately two hours. Then we would adjourn to the game room upstairs, where we would play pool and darts and get whacked on Dewar’s. Then, at two a.m., we would head back downstairs to the TV room and start the second snorting party, which would consist of a twenty-gram rock of ninety-eight percent pure cocaine. To snort it in one sitting would be a conquest worthy of the Wolf himself.
And follow this plan we did—right down to the very fucking letter, in fact—spending the next two hours snorting thick lines of cocaine through an 18-karat-gold straw, while we watched MTV with no sound and listened to “Sympathy for the Devil” on repeat mode. Then we went upstairs to the game room. When two a.m. rolled around, I said with a great smile, “The time has come to snort the rock, my friends! Follow me.”
We walked back downstairs to the TV room and sat in our previous positions. I reached over for the rock and it was gone. Gone? How the fuck was that possible? I looked at Dave and Scott and said, “Okay, guys: Stop fucking around. Which one of you took the rock?”
They both looked at me, astonished. Dave said, “What are you, kidding me? I didn’t take the rock! I swear on my kid’s eyes!”
Scott added, in a defensive tone, “Don’t look at me! I would never do something like that.” He shook his head gravely. “Fucking around with another man’s coke is a sin against God. Nothing less.”
The three of us got down on our hands and knees and started crawling around on the carpet. Two minutes later we were looking at one another, dumbfounded—and empty-handed. I said skeptically, “Maybe it fell behind the seat cushions.”
Dave and Scott nodded, and we proceeded to remove all the cushions. We found nothing.
“I can’t believe this shit,” I said. “It makes no fucking sense.” Then a wild inspiration came bubbling up into my brain. Perhaps the rock fell insideone of the seat cushions! It seemed improbable, but stranger things had happened, hadn’t they?
Indeed. “I’ll be right back,” I said, and I ran to the kitchen, full speed, and slid a stainless-steel butcher knife out of its wooden holder. Then I ran back to the TV room, armed and ready. The rock was mine!
“What are you doing?” asked Dave, in the tone of the incredulous.
“What the fuck do you think I’m doing?” I sputtered, dropping to my knees and plunging the knife into a seat cushion. I began throwing the foam and feathers on the carpet. The sofa had three seat cushions and an equal number of backrests. In less than a minute I’d shredded all of them. “Motherfucker!” I muttered. I switched my focus to the love seat, cutting the cushions open with a vengeance. Still nothing. Now I was getting pissed. “I can’t believe this shit! Where’d the fucking rock go?” I looked at Dave. “Were we in the living room at all?”
He shook his head back and forth nervously. “I don’t remember being in the living room,” he said. “Why don’t we just forget about the rock?”
“Are you fucking crazy or something? I’m gonna find that fucking rock if it’s the last thing I do!” I turned to Scott and narrowed my eyes accusingly. “Don’t bullshit me, Scott. We werein the living room, weren’t we?”