And as word of this little secret began to spread throughout Long Island—that there was this wild office, in Lake Success, where all you had to do was show up, follow orders, swear your undying loyalty to the owner, and he would make you rich—young kids started showing up at the boardroom unannounced. At first they trickled in; then they poured in. It started with kids from the middle-class suburbs of Queens and Long Island and then quickly spread to all five boroughs of New York City. Before I knew it they were coming from all across America, begging me for jobs. Mere kidswould travel halfway across the country to the boardroom of Stratton Oakmont and swear their undying loyalty to the Wolf of Wall Street. And the rest, as they say, is Wall Street history.
As always, my ultraloyal personal assistant, Janet, *1was sitting before her own desk, anxiously awaiting my arrival. At this particular moment she was tapping her right index finger on her desktop and shaking her head in a way that said, “Why the fuck does my whole day revolve around when my crazy boss decides to show up for work?” Or perhaps that was just my imagination and she was simply bored. Either way, Janet’s desk was positioned just in front of my door, as if she were an offensive lineman protecting a quarterback. That was no accident. Among her many functions, Janet was my gatekeeper. If you wanted to see me or even speak to me, you first had to get through Janet. That was no simple task. She protected me the way a lioness protects her cubs, having no problem unleashing her sometimes righteous wrath on any living soul who tried breaching the gauntlet.
As soon as Janet saw me she flashed a warm smile, and I took a moment to regard her. She was in her late twenties but looked a few years older. She had a thick mane of dark brown hair, fair white skin, and a tight little body. She had beautiful blue eyes, but there was a certain sadness to them, as if they’d seen too much heartache for someone so young. Perhaps that was why Janet showed up for work each day dressed like Death. Yes, from head to toe, she always wore black, and today was no exception.
“Good morning,” said Janet, with a bright smile and slight hint of annoyance in her tone. “Why are you so late?”
I smiled warmly at my ultraloyal assistant. In fact, in spite of Janet’s funeral ensemble and her undying urge to know every last ounce of my personal gossip, I found the sight of her immensely pleasing. She was Gwynne’s counterpart in the office. Whether it was paying my bills, managing my brokerage accounts, keeping my schedule, arranging my travel, paying my hookers, running interference with my drug dealers, or lying to whichever wife I was currently married to, there was no task either too great or too small that Janet wouldn’t gladly jump through a hoop to accomplish. She was incredibly competent and never made a mistake.
Janet had also grown up in Bayside, but her parents had both died when she was young. Her mother had been a good lady, but her father had mistreated her, a total scumbag. I did my best to make her feel loved, to feel wanted. And I protected her in the same way she protected me.
When Janet got married last month, I threw her a glorious wedding and walked her down the aisle with great pride. On that day she wore a snow-white Vera Wang wedding dress—paid for by me and picked out by the Duchess, who also spent two hours doing Janet’s makeup. (Yes, the Duchess was also an aspiring makeover artist.) And Janet looked absolutely gorgeous.
“Good morning,” I replied with a warm smile. “The room sounds good today, right?”
Tonelessly: “It always sounds good, but you didn’t answer me. Why are you so late?”
A pushy little broad, she was, and damn nosy too. I let out a deep sigh and said, “Did Nadine call, by any chance?”
“No. Why? What happened?” They were rapid-fire questions. Apparently she sensed a juicy piece of gossip.
“Nothing happened, Janet. I got home late, and Nadine got pissed and threw a glass of water at me. That’s it; although, actually, it was three glasses, but who’s counting? Anyway, the rest of it is too bizarre for words, but I need to send her flowers right now or else I might be hunting for wife number three before the day is out.”
“How much should I send?” she asked, picking up a spiral pad and Montblanc pen.
“I don’t know…three or four thousand worth. Just tell them to send the whole fucking truck. And make sure they send lots of lilies. She likes lilies.”
Janet narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips, as if to say, “You’re breaching our silent understanding that as part of my compensation package it’s my right to know all the gory details, no matter how gory they might be!” But being a professional, driven by her sense of duty, all she said was, “Fine, you’ll tell me the story later.”
I nodded unconvincingly. “Maybe, Janet, we’ll see. So tell me what’s going on.”
“Well—Steve Madden’s floating around here somewhere, and he seems kind of nervous. I don’t think he’s gonna do such a good job today.”
An immediate surge of adrenaline. Steve Madden!How ironic it was that with all the chaos and insanity this morning it had actually slipped my mind that Steve Madden Shoes was going public today. In fact, before the day was out I’d be ringing the register to the tune of twenty million bucks. Not too shabby! And Steve had to stand up in front of the boardroom and give a little speech, a so-called dog-and-pony show. Now, that would be interesting! I wasn’t sure if Steve was the sort who could look into the wild eyes of all those crazy young Strattonites and not completely choke.
Still, dog-and-pony shows were a Wall Street tradition: Just before a new issue came to market, the CEO would stand before a friendly crowd of stockbrokers and give a canned speech, focusing on how glorious his company’s future was. It was a friendly sort of encounter with a lot of mutual back-scratching and phony palm-pressing.
And then there was Stratton, where things got pretty ugly sometimes. The problem was that the Strattonites weren’t the least bit interested; they just wanted to sell the stock and make money. So if the guest speaker didn’t captivate them from the moment he began speaking, the Strattonites would quickly grow bored. Then they would start booing and catcalling—and then spewing out profanities. Eventually, they would throw things at the speaker, starting with balled-up paper and then quickly moving to food products like rotten tomatoes, half-eaten chicken legs, and half-consumed apples.
I couldn’t let such a terrible fate befall Steve Madden. First and foremost, he was a childhood friend of Danny Porush, my second-in-command. And, second, I personally owned more than half of Steve’s company, so I was basically taking my own deal public. I had given Steve $500,000 in start-up capital about sixteen months ago, which made me the company’s single largest shareholder, with an eighty-five percent stake. A few months later I sold off thirty-five percent of my stock for a little over $500,000, recouping my original investment. Now I owned fifty percent for free! Talk about your good deals!
In point of fact, it was this very process of buying stakes in private companies and then reselling a portion of my original investment (and recouping my money) that had turned Stratton into even more of a printing press than it already was. And, as I used the power of the boardroom to take my own companies public, my net worth soared and soared. On Wall Street this process was called “merchant banking,” but to me it was like hitting the lotto every four weeks.
I said to Janet, “He should do fine, but if he doesn’t, I’ll go up there and bail him out. Anyway, what else is going on?”
With a shrug: “Your father’s looking for you, and he seems pissed.”