Roland laughed raucously. "Oh, my friend, you are too much! What a wonderful way to look at things. I don"t think I have ever heard someone state their outlook in such a compelling manner. Most excellent that was-most excellent!"
I chuckled and said, "Well, from a man like you I take that as a great compliment. I won"t deny that from time to time, like any businessman, I step over the line and take a risk or two. But they"re always calculated risks-heavily calculated, I might add. And every risk I take is always supported by an airtight paper trail, which supports a notion of plausible deniability. You"re familiar with the term, I a.s.sume?"
Roland nodded his head slowly, obviously enthralled with my ability to rationalize the breaking of every securities law ever invented. What he wasn"t aware of was that the SEC was in the process of inventing new ones to try to stop me.
I soldiered on: "I figured you"d be. Anyway, when I opened up my brokerage firm five years ago, a very smart man gave me some very smart advice. He said, "If you want to survive in this crazy business of ours, then you have to operate under the a.s.sumption that every one of your transactions will eventually be scrutinized by a three-lettered government agency. And when that day comes, you"d better be d.a.m.n sure that you have an explanation as to why the transaction doesn"t violate any securities laws or, for that matter, any laws."
"Now, that being said, Roland, I"ll tell you that ninety-nine percent of what I do is on the up and up. The only problem is that the other one percent kills you every time. Perhaps it would be wise to put as much distance between myself and that one percent as humanly possible. I a.s.sume you"d be the trustee of each of these corporations, correct?"
"Yes, my friend. Pursuant to Swiss law, I will be empowered to sign doc.u.ments on the corporation"s behalf and to enter into any contracts that I believe are in the best interest of the corporation or its beneficiaries. Of course, the only transactions that I will deem appropriate will be the ones you recommend. For example, if you were to tell me that you thought I should invest my money in a certain new issue or in a parcel of real estate-or anything, for that matter-then I would be obliged to follow your advice.
"And this is where my services will become most valuable to you. You see, with each investment we make, I will put together a file filled with research doc.u.ments and correspondence-coming from various securities a.n.a.lysts or real estate experts or whoever else need be-so I have an independent basis for making my investment. Sometimes I might retain the services of an outside auditor, whose job it would be to furnish me with a report stating that the investment is a sound one. Of course, this auditor will always come to the appropriate conclusion, but not until he has issued a fancy report with bar charts and colored graphs. In the end, it is these things that truly support a notion of plausible deniability. If someone should ever raise a question as to why I made a particular investment, I would simply point to a two-inch-thick file and shrug my shoulders.
"Again, my friend, we are only scratching the surface here. There are many strategies I will share with you that will allow you to go about your business behind a cloak of invisibility. In addition, if there should ever come a time when you wish to repatriate any of this money-to bring it back into the United States, without so much as a trace-this is another area where I can be most helpful."
Interesting, I thought. This was what I was having the most trouble getting my arms around. I moved forward to the edge of the couch, closing the distance between us to less than three feet. Then I lowered my voice and said, "That"s something I"m very much interested in, Roland. I tell you the truth-I was less than impressed with the scenarios Jean Jacques laid out for me; he outlined two different options, and, to my way of thinking, they were amateurish at best and suicidal at worst."
"Well," replied Roland, with a shrug of his shoulders, "that doesn"t really surprise me. Jean Jacques is a banker; his expertise lies in the marshaling of a.s.sets, not in the juggling of them. He is an excellent banker, I might add, and he will manage your account well, with the utmost discretion. But he is not well versed in the creation of doc.u.ments that allow money to flow back and forth between countries without raising eyebrows. That is the function of a trustee"-a Master Forger!-"such as myself. In fact, you will find that Union Bancaire will heavily discourage the movement of money out of the account. Of course, you will always be able to do with your money as you please; they will not actually try to stop you. But do not be surprised if Jean Jacques tries to dissuade you from moving money out of the account, perhaps using the excuse that moving money raises red flags. But this is not something to be held against Jean Jacques. All Swiss bankers operate in that fashion, and it is a self-serving one, I might add. The simple fact, my friend, is that with three trillion dollars a day flowing in and out of the Swiss banking system, there is no amount of activity in your account that could possibly raise a red flag. As smart a man as you can easily see the bank"s motivation for wanting to keep their account balances as elevated as possible.
"Out of curiosity, though, what ways did Jean Jacques suggest to you? I am interested to hear the bank"s latest rhetoric in this area." With that, Roland leaned back and interlaced his fingers over his belly.
Mirroring his body language, I slid back from the edge of the couch and said, "Well, the first way he recommended was through a debit card. That seemed f.u.c.king outlandish to me, if you"ll pardon my f.u.c.king French. I mean, running around town with a debit card tied to a foreign account leaves a paper trail a mile wide!" I shook my head and rolled my eyes, to drive my point home.
"And his second recommendation was equally ridiculous: I would use my overseas money to take out a mortgage on my own home, in the United States. Anyway, I trust that none of this will be repeated to Saurel, but I have to admit I was extremely disappointed with this part of his presentation. So tell me, Roland-what am I missing here?"
Roland smiled confidently. "There are many ways to do this, all of which leave no paper trail whatsoever. Or, to be more accurate, they leave a very wide paper trail, but it"s just the sort of trail you would like to see, the sort that supports a position of complete innocence and will stand up to the most intense scrutiny, on both sides of the Atlantic. Are you familiar with the practice of transfer pricing?"
Transfer pricing? Yes, I knew what it was, but how would-all at once a thousand nefarious strategies went flashing through my brain. The possibilities were...limitless! I smiled broadly at my Master Forger and said, "Actually, I do, Master For-I mean, Roland, and it"s a brilliant idea."
He seemed shocked that I knew about the little-known art of transfer pricing, which was a financial sh.e.l.l game where you would engage a transaction, either underpaying or overpaying for a particular product, depending on which way you wanted your money to flow. The rub lied in the fact that you were actually on both sides of the transaction: You were both the buyer and the seller. Transfer pricing was used mostly as a tax dodge, a strategy employed by billion-dollar multinational corporations-whereby they would alter their internal pricing strategies when selling from one wholly owned subsidiary to another-which resulted in the transfer transfer of profits from countries with heavy corporate income-tax burdens to countries with none. I had read something about it in an obscure economics magazine-an article about Honda Motors, which was overcharging its U.S. factories for automotive parts, thereby minimizing its U.S. profits. For obvious reasons, the IRS was in an uproar. of profits from countries with heavy corporate income-tax burdens to countries with none. I had read something about it in an obscure economics magazine-an article about Honda Motors, which was overcharging its U.S. factories for automotive parts, thereby minimizing its U.S. profits. For obvious reasons, the IRS was in an uproar.
Roland said, "I am surprised you know about transfer pricing. It is not a widely known practice, especially in the United States."
I shrugged. "I can see a thousand ways to use it, to move money back and forth without raising any eyebrows. All we have to do is form a bearer corporation and interposition it in some sort of transaction with one of my U.S. companies. Right off the top of my head I"m thinking about a company called Dollar Time. They"re sitting on a couple of million dollars of worthless clothing inventory that I couldn"t sell even for one dollar, just like the name says.
"But what we could could do is form a bearer corporation and give it a name that sounds clothing-related, like Wholesale Clothing Inc. or something along those lines. Then I can have Dollar Time enter into a transaction with my overseas company, which would buy the worthless inventory, moving my money from Switzerland back into the United States. And the only paper trail would be a purchase order and an invoice." do is form a bearer corporation and give it a name that sounds clothing-related, like Wholesale Clothing Inc. or something along those lines. Then I can have Dollar Time enter into a transaction with my overseas company, which would buy the worthless inventory, moving my money from Switzerland back into the United States. And the only paper trail would be a purchase order and an invoice."
Roland nodded and said, "Yes, my friend. And I have the ability to print up all sorts of invoices and bills of sale and anything else that might be needed. I can even print brokerage confirmations and date them back as of a year ago. In other words, we can go back to last year"s newspaper and pick a stock that has gone up tremendously, then create records that indicate a certain trade was made. But I am getting ahead of myself here. It would take me many months to teach you everything.
"On a separate note, I can also make arrangements to have large amounts of cash available to you in many foreign countries, simply by forming bearer corporations and then creating doc.u.mentation for purchases and sales for nonexistent commodities. At the end of the day, the profit will end up in the country of your choosing, where you may retrieve the cash. And all that will be left is an airtight paper trail that points to the legitimacy of the transaction. In fact, I have already formed two companies on your behalf. Come, my boy, and I will show you." With that, my Master Forger raised his enormous bulk from his black leather club chair, led me to the wall of corporate books, and removed two of them. "Here," he said. "The first is called United Overseas Investments, and the second is called Far East Ventures. They are both chartered in the British Virgin Islands, where there will be no taxes to pay and no regulation to speak of. All I need is a copy of Patricia"s pa.s.sport and then I will handle the rest."
"No problem," I said, smiling, and I reached into my inside suit-jacket pocket and handed the copy of Patricia"s pa.s.sport to my wonderful Master Forger. I would learn everything I could from this man. I would learn all the ins and outs of the Swiss banking world. I would learn how to hide all my transactions within an impenetrable web of foreign bearer corporations. And if the going ever got rough, the very paper trail I would create would be my salvation.
Yes-it all made sense now. As different as Jean Jacques Saurel and Roland Franks were, they were both men of power, and they were both men who could be trusted. And this was the land of Switzerland, the glorious land of secrets, where neither of them would have any reason to betray me.
Alas, I would be wrong about one of them.
CHAPTER 18
FU MANCHU AND THE MULE
It was a gorgeous Sat.u.r.day afternoon in Westhampton Beach, on Labor Day weekend, and we were lying in bed, making love, just like any other husband and wife-sort of. The d.u.c.h.ess was lying flat on her back with her arms extended over her head and her head resting upon a white silk pillow, the perfect curve of her face framed by her luxurious mane of golden blond hair. She looked like an angel sent down from heaven just for me. I was lying on top of her with my arms extended like hers, and I was holding down her hands with my hands, our fingers interlaced. A thin film of perspiration was all that separated us.
I was trying to use the full weight of my skinny body to keep her from moving. We were pretty much the same size, so we fit together like bookends. As I breathed in her glorious scent, I could feel her nipples pushing against mine, and I could feel the warmth of her luscious thighs against my thighs, and I could feel the silky smoothness of her ankles rubbing against mine.
But in spite of being soft and slender, and ten degrees hotter than a raging campfire, she was stronger than an ox! Hard as I tried, I couldn"t seem to keep her in one spot. "Stop moving!" I sputtered, with a mixture of pa.s.sion and anger. "I"m almost done, Nae! Just keep your legs together!"
Now the d.u.c.h.ess"s voice took on the tone of a child about to throw a temper tantrum: "I"m-not-comfortable! Now-let-me-up!"
I tried kissing her on the lips, but she turned her head to the side and all I caught was a high cheekbone. I craned my head and tried catching her from a side angle, but she quickly turned her head to the other side. Now I had the other cheekbone. It was so chiseled I almost cut my lower lip.
I knew I should release her-that would be the right thing to do-but I wasn"t up for a location change right now, especially when I was so close to the Promised Land. So I tried changing tactics. In the tone of the beggar, I said, "Come on, Nae! Please don"t do this to me!" I offered her a pout. "I"ve been a perfect husband for two weeks now, so stop complaining and let me kiss you!"
As the words escaped my lips, I took great pride in the fact that they were actually true. I had been a near-perfect husband since the day I"d arrived home from Switzerland. I hadn"t slept with one prost.i.tute-not even one!-not to mention the fact that I hadn"t even been staying out late. My drug intake was down-way down!-cut by more than half, and I"d even skipped a few days. In fact, I couldn"t recall the last time I"d entered the drool phase.
I was in the middle of one of those brief interludes where my outrageous drug addiction seemed somewhat under control. I"d had these periods before, where my uncontrollable urge to fly higher than the Concorde was greatly diminished. And during these periods even my back pain seemed less severe, and I would sleep better. But, alas, it was always temporary. Something or someone would set me off on a rampage-and then it would be worse than before.
With a bit of anger slipping out, I said, "Come on, G.o.d d.a.m.n it! Hold your head still! I"m almost ready to come, and I want to kiss you while I"m coming!"
Apparently the d.u.c.h.ess didn"t appreciate my selfish att.i.tude. Before I realized what was happening, she had placed her hands on my shoulders and with one swift movement of her slender arms she thrust upward-and my p.e.n.i.s quickly disinserted itself and I was flying off the bed, heading for the bleached-wood floor.
On my way down, I caught a pleasant glimpse of the dark blue Atlantic Ocean, which I could see through a solid wall of plate gla.s.s that ran the entire length of the back of the house. The ocean was about a hundred yards away, but it looked much closer. Just before I hit the dirt I heard the d.u.c.h.ess say, "Oh, honey! Watch out! I didn"t mean-"
BOOM!
I took a deep breath and blinked, praying for no broken bones. "Ughhhhhhhhhhh...why"d you do that?" I groaned. I was now lying flat on my back, stark naked, with my erect p.e.n.i.s glistening in the early-afternoon sunlight. I tilted my head up and took a moment to regard my erection.... It was still intact. That lifted my spirits a bit. Had I thrown my back out?...No, I was pretty sure I hadn"t. But I was too dazed to move a muscle.
The d.u.c.h.ess poked her blond head over the side of the bed and stared at me quizzically. Then she pursed those luscious lips of hers, and in a tone that a mother would normally use on a child who"d just taken an unexpected tumble in the playground, she said, "Oh, my poor little baby! Come back into bed with me, and I"ll make you feel all better!"
Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I ignored her use of the word little and rolled over onto all fours and stood up. I was about to climb back on top of her when I found myself mesmerized by the incredible sight before me: not just the luscious d.u.c.h.ess but also the $3 million in cash she was lying upon.
Yes-it was $3 million on the nose. The big three-O!
We had just finished counting it. It was wrapped in stacks of $10,000, and each stack was about an inch thick. There were three hundred stacks, and they were spread out over the entire length of the king-size mattress-one atop the other, a foot and a half in the air. At each corner of the bed, an enormous elephant tusk rose up three feet, setting the motif for the room, which was an African safari come to Long Island!
Just then Nadine scooted over to the side of the bed, sending $70 or $80,000 onto the floor. It joined another quarter million or so that had gone flying off the bed along with me. Still, it didn"t make a dent in the picture. There was so much green on the bed it looked like the floor of the Amazon rain forest after a monsoon.
The d.u.c.h.ess fixed me with a warm smile. "I"m sorry, sweetie! I didn"t mean to throw you off the bed...I swear!" She shrugged innocently. "I just had this terrible cramp in my shoulder, and I guess you don"t weigh that much. Let"s go into the closet and make love there. Okay, love-bug?" She flashed me another lubricious smile, and with one athletic move she popped her naked body right out of bed and stood beside me. Then she crooked her mouth to the side and started chewing on the inside of her own cheek. It was something she did whenever she was having trouble making sense of something.
After a few seconds, she stopped chewing and said, "Are you sure this is legal, "cause I don"t know. There"s something about it that seems...wrong."
At this particular moment I had little desire to lie to my wife about my money-laundering activities. In fact, my only current desire was to bend her over the side of the bed and f.u.c.k her brains out! But she was my wife, which meant she had earned the right to be lied to. With the utmost conviction, I said, "I told you, Nae-I took all the cash out of the bank. You"ve seen me do it. Now, I"m not denying that Elliot hasn"t given me a few dollars here and there"-a few dollars? Try $5 million!-"but that has nothing to do with this money. All this money is strictly legit, and if the government were to come charging in here right now, I would simply show them my withdrawal slips, and that would be that." I put my arms around her waist and pressed my body against hers and kissed her.
She giggled and pulled away. "I know you took the cash out of the bank, but it just seems illegal. I don"t know...having this much cash...well, I don"t know. It just seems weird." She started chewing on the inside of her mouth again. "Are you sure you know what you"re doing?"
I was slowly losing my erection, which deeply saddened me. It was time for a location change. "Just trust me, sweetie. I got it under control. Let"s go in the closet and make love. Todd and Carolyn are gonna be here in less than an hour, and I wanna make love without rushing. Please?"
She narrowed her eyes at me, then all at once she took off into a run and said over her shoulder, "I"ll race you to the closet!"
And off we went-without so much as a care in the world.
There was no denying that some very wacky Jews had fled from Lefrak City in the early 1970s.
But none of them was wackier than Todd Garret.
Todd was three years older than me, and I can still remember the first time I laid eyes on him. I had just turned ten years old, and Todd was standing in the one-car garage of the garden apartment he had moved into with his two wacky parents, Lester and Thelma. His older brother, Freddy, had recently died of a heroin overdose, the rusty needle still in his arm when they"d found him sitting on the toilet bowl, two days postmortem.
So, relatively speaking, Todd was the normal one.
Anyway, he was kicking and punching a white canvas heavy bag-wearing black kung fu pants and black kung fu slippers. Back then, in the early seventies, there weren"t karate centers in every local shopping center, so Todd Garret quickly developed a reputation as being somewhat of an oddity. But at least he was consistent: You could find him in his tiny garage, twelve hours a day, seven days a week-kicking and punching and kneeing the bag.
No one took Todd seriously until he turned seventeen. It was then that Todd found himself standing in the wrong bar somewhere in Jackson Heights, Queens. Jackson Heights was only a few miles away from Bayside, but it might just as well have been on another planet. The official language was broken English; the most common profession was unemployment; and even the grandmas carried switchblades. Anyway, inside the bar, words were exchanged between Todd and four Colombian drug dealers-at which point they attacked him. When it was all over, two of them had broken bones, all four had broken faces, and one had been stabbed with his own knife, which Todd had taken from him. After that, everyone took Todd seriously.
From there, Todd made the logical leap into big-time drug dealing, where through a combination of fear and intimidation, along with a healthy dose of street smarts, he quickly rose to the top. He was in his early twenties-making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. He spent his summers in the south of France and the Italian Riviera-and his winters on the glorious beaches of Rio de Janeiro.
All was going well for Todd until one day five years ago. He was lying on Ipanema Beach and got bitten by an unidentified tropical insect-and just like that, four months later, he found himself on the waiting list for a heart transplant. In less than a year he was down to ninety-five pounds, and his five-foot ten-inch frame looked like a skeleton"s.
After Todd spent two long years on the waiting list, a six-foot six-inch lumberjack, who apparently had two left feet and an unusually short lifeline, fell from a California redwood tree and plunged to his death. And, as they say, one man"s curse was another man"s blessing: His tissue type was a perfect match for Todd.
Three months after his heart transplant Todd was back in the gym; three months after that he was back at full strength; three months after that, Todd became the biggest Quaalude dealer in America; and three months after that, he found out that I, Jordan Belfort, the owner of the fabled investment-banking firm of Stratton Oakmont, was addicted to Quaaludes, so he reached out to me.
That was more than two years ago, and since then Todd had sold me five thousand Quaaludes and given me five thousand more-free-in exchange for all the money I was making him in Stratton new issues. But as the profits on the new issues soared into the millions, he quickly realized that he couldn"t possibly reciprocate with Quaaludes. So he began asking me if there was anything he could do for me, anything at all.
I had resisted the impulse to have him beat up every kid who had looked at me wrong since the second grade, but after the three thousandth time of him saying, "If there"s anything I could ever do for you, even if it means killing someone, you just let me know," I finally decided to take him up on the offer. And the fact that his new wife, Carolyn, happened to be a Swiss citizen made things seem that much more natural.
At this particular moment Todd and Carolyn were standing in my master bedroom doing what they always did: arguing! At my urging, the d.u.c.h.ess had gone into town to do some shopping. After all, I didn"t want her to see the very insanity that was now transpiring before me.
The very insanity: Carolyn Garret was wearing nothing but white silk panties and white Tretorn tennis sneakers. She was standing less than five feet from me, with her hands clasped behind her head and her elbows c.o.c.ked out to the side, as if a policeman had just screamed, "Put your hands behind your head and freeze, or I"ll shoot!" Meanwhile, her enormous Swiss b.r.e.a.s.t.s hung like two overfilled water balloons slapped onto her thin-boned, five-foot two-inch frame. A l.u.s.ty mane of bleached-blond hair went all the way down to the crack of her a.s.s. She had a set of terrific blue eyes, a broad forehead, and a face that was pretty enough. She was a bombsh.e.l.l, all right-a Swiss bombsh.e.l.l.
"Tahad, you are zdupid fool!" said the Swiss Bombsh.e.l.l, whose thick accent dripped with Swiss cheese. "You are hutting me weeth zees tape, you ahhs-zole!" Hurting me with this tape, you a.s.shole. Hurting me with this tape, you a.s.shole.
"Shut up, you French wench," replied her loving husband, "and stay f.u.c.king still, before I slap you!" Todd was circling his wife, holding a roll of masking tape in his hand. With each complete revolution, the $300,000 of cash already taped to her stomach and thighs grew that much tighter.
"Who do you call wench, you imbecile! I have the right to smash you one for making such a comment at me. Right, Jordan?"
I nodded. "Definitely, Carolyn-you go right ahead and smash his face in. The problem is, your husband"s such a sick b.a.s.t.a.r.d that he"ll probably enjoy it! If you really want to p.i.s.s him off, why don"t you go around town telling everyone how kind and nice he is, and how he likes to lie in bed with you on Sunday mornings and read the Times Times?"
Todd flashed me an evil smile, and I couldn"t help but wonder how a Jew from Lefrak could end up looking so much like Fu Manchu. The simple fact was that his eyes had become slightly slanted and his skin had turned slightly yellow and he had a beard and mustache that made him a dead ringer for Fu Manchu. Todd always wore black, and today was no exception. He had on a black Versace T-shirt, with an enormous black leather V on the front, and black Lycra bicycle shorts. Both the shirt and the shorts hugged his heavily muscled body like a second skin. I could see the outline of a gun, a .38 snub-nose that he always carried, bulging out from beneath his bicycle shorts over the small of his back. On his forearms was a thick coating of coa.r.s.e black hair that looked like it belonged on a werewolf.
"I don"t know why you encourage her," muttered Todd. "Just ignore her. It"s much easier."
The Bombsh.e.l.l gritted her white teeth. "Oh, go ignore yourself, you douche-a-bag-a!"
"It"s douche bag," snapped Todd, "not douche-a-bag-a, douche-a-bag-a, you Swiss nitwit! Now shut the f.u.c.k up and don"t move. I"m almost done." you Swiss nitwit! Now shut the f.u.c.k up and don"t move. I"m almost done."
Todd reached over to the bed and picked up a handheld metal detector-the kind used when you pa.s.s through airport security. He began sweeping it up and down the full length of the Bombsh.e.l.l"s body. When he reached her enormous b.r.e.a.s.t.s, he paused...and both of us took a moment to regard them. Well, I was never really much of a breast man, but she did happen to have an unusually fine pair of jugs.
"You see, I tell you," said the Bombsh.e.l.l. "It make no sound! This is paper money, not silver. Why you think metal detector make difference, huh? You just feel like wasting money buying zdupid device, after I tell you no, dog-man!"
Todd shook his head in disgust. "The next dog-man is your last dog-man, and if you think I"m kidding then just go ahead and say it. But to answer your question, every hundred-dollar bill has a thin strip of metal in it, so I just wanted to make sure that when they were all wrapped together it wouldn"t set off the detector. Here, look." He slid a single hundred-dollar bill from one of the stacks and held it up to the light. Sure enough, there it was: a thin metal strip, perhaps a millimeter wide, that ran from the top of the bill to the bottom.
Pleased with himself, Todd said, "Okay, genius? Don"t ever doubt me again."
"Okay, I give you this one, Tahad, but nothing more. I will tell you that you need to treat me better, because I am nice girl and I could find other man. You big show-off in front of your friend, but me wear the pants in this family and that..."
And the Swiss Bombsh.e.l.l went on and on about how Tahad Tahad mistreated her, but I stopped listening. It was becoming painfully obvious that she alone couldn"t smuggle nearly enough cash to make a real dent in things. Unless she was willing to stick the cash in her luggage, which I considered too risky, it would take her ten roundtrips to get the full $3 million there. That would mean clearing Customs twenty times, ten on each side of the Atlantic. The fact that she was a Swiss citizen all but a.s.sured she would slip into Switzerland without incident, and the chances of her being stopped on the way out of the United States were virtually nil. In fact, unless someone had tipped off U.S. Customs, there was no chance whatsoever. mistreated her, but I stopped listening. It was becoming painfully obvious that she alone couldn"t smuggle nearly enough cash to make a real dent in things. Unless she was willing to stick the cash in her luggage, which I considered too risky, it would take her ten roundtrips to get the full $3 million there. That would mean clearing Customs twenty times, ten on each side of the Atlantic. The fact that she was a Swiss citizen all but a.s.sured she would slip into Switzerland without incident, and the chances of her being stopped on the way out of the United States were virtually nil. In fact, unless someone had tipped off U.S. Customs, there was no chance whatsoever.
Still, to keep sticking your hand in the cookie jar over and over again seemed reckless-almost bad karma. Eventually something had to go wrong. And $3 million was just what I was starting with; if all went well, I was planning to smuggle five times that.
I said to Tahad Tahad and the Swiss Bombsh.e.l.l, "I hate to interrupt you guys from killing each other, but, if you"ll excuse me, Carolyn, I need to take a walk on the beach with your husband. I don"t think you can bring enough cash there alone, so we need to rethink things, and I"d prefer not to talk in the house." I reached over to the bed, picked up a pair of sewing scissors, and handed them to Todd. "Here-why don"t you cut her loose and then we"ll go down to the beach." and the Swiss Bombsh.e.l.l, "I hate to interrupt you guys from killing each other, but, if you"ll excuse me, Carolyn, I need to take a walk on the beach with your husband. I don"t think you can bring enough cash there alone, so we need to rethink things, and I"d prefer not to talk in the house." I reached over to the bed, picked up a pair of sewing scissors, and handed them to Todd. "Here-why don"t you cut her loose and then we"ll go down to the beach."
"f.u.c.k her!" he said, handing his wife the scissors. "Let her uncut herself. It"ll give her something to do besides complain. That"s all she ever does, anyway-shop and complain, and maybe spread her legs once in a while."
"Oh, you funny man, Tahad. Like you such great lover! Hah! That is big joke. Go, Jordan-you take big shot to beach so I have moment of peace. I unwrap myself."
With skepticism, I said, "Are you sure, Carolyn?"
Todd said, "Yeah, she"s sure." Then he looked Carolyn right in the eye and said, "When we bring this money back to the city, I"m gonna recount every dollar of it, and if there"s so much as one bill missing, I"ll slit your throat and watch you bleed to death!"
The Swiss Bombsh.e.l.l started screaming: "Ohhh, this is last time you make threat at me! I will flush all your medicine and replace with poison...you...you f.u.c.k f.u.c.k! I will smash..." and she kept cursing at Todd in a combination of English and French, and perhaps a little bit of German, although it was hard to tell.
Todd and I exited the master bedroom through a sliding gla.s.s door that looked out over the Atlantic. In spite of the door being thick enough to withstand a Category 5 hurricane, I could still hear Carolyn screaming when we reached the back deck.
At the far end of the deck, a long wooden walkway jutted out over the dunes and led down to the sand. As we made our way over to the edge of the water I felt calm, almost serene-despite the voice inside my head that screamed, "You"re in the midst of making one of the gravest errors of your young life!" But I ignored the voice and instead focused on the warmth of the sun.
We were heading west with the dark blue Atlantic Ocean off to our left. There was a commercial fishing trawler about two hundred yards offsh.o.r.e, and I could see white seagulls dive-bombing in the trawler"s wake, trying to steal sc.r.a.ps from the day"s catch. In spite of the obvious benign nature of the vessel, it still occurred to me that there might be a government agent hiding atop the flybridge-pointing a parabolic mike at us, trying to listen to our conversation.
I took a deep breath, fought down the paranoia, and said, "It"s not gonna work with just Carolyn. It"ll take too many trips, and if she keeps going back and forth Customs will eventually flag her pa.s.sport. And I can"t afford to spread the trips out over the next six months either. I have other business in the States that"s contingent on me getting the funds overseas."
Todd nodded but said nothing. He had enough street smarts not to ask what sort of business I had or why it was so pressing. But the fact remained that I had to get my money overseas as quickly as possible. As I"d suspected, Dollar Time was in much worse shape than Kaminsky had let on; it needed an immediate cash infusion of $3 million.
If I tried to raise money through a public offering, it would take at least three months and I would be forced to do an interim audit of the company"s books. Now that that would be a nasty picture! Christ! At the rate the company was burning cash, I was certain that the auditor would issue a going-concern opinion-meaning, they would add a footnote to the company"s financials stating that there were serious doubts the company could stay in business for another year. If that happened, NASDAQ would delist the company, which would be the kiss of death. Once off NASDAQ, Dollar Time would become a true penny stock, and all would be lost. would be a nasty picture! Christ! At the rate the company was burning cash, I was certain that the auditor would issue a going-concern opinion-meaning, they would add a footnote to the company"s financials stating that there were serious doubts the company could stay in business for another year. If that happened, NASDAQ would delist the company, which would be the kiss of death. Once off NASDAQ, Dollar Time would become a true penny stock, and all would be lost.
So my only option was to raise money through a private offering. But that was easier said than done. As formidable as Stratton was at raising money for public offerings, it was weak at raising money for private offerings. (It was an entirely different business, and Stratton wasn"t geared up for it.) In addition, I was always working on ten or fifteen deals at the same time, and each of them required some amount of private money. So I was already spread thin. To sink $3 million into Dollar Time would put a serious damper on my other investment-banking deals.
But there was was an answer: Regulation S. Through the legal exemption of Regulation S I could use my "Patricia Mellor accounts" to buy private stock in Dollar Time, then forty days later turn around and sell it back into the United States at a huge profit. It was a far cry from having to buy stock privately-in the United States-and then wait two full years to sell it under Rule 144. an answer: Regulation S. Through the legal exemption of Regulation S I could use my "Patricia Mellor accounts" to buy private stock in Dollar Time, then forty days later turn around and sell it back into the United States at a huge profit. It was a far cry from having to buy stock privately-in the United States-and then wait two full years to sell it under Rule 144.