Whipping Boy

by Allen Kurzweil

  Morimoto kept missing deadlines, and with each holdup he was compelled to dig deeper into his pocket. “Every delay cost five or ten grand.” By the time he received his “failure to perform” notice, Morimoto had blown through $500,000. Roughly half went to Badische and Barclay. The rest was spent on travel and legal costs.

  “Man oh man, did they do a number on me,” he says, again shaking his head.

  “What was it like working with Cesar?” I ask.

  “He didn’t leave much of an impression. He was very noncommittal after he got his money.”

  “Do you remember his nationality?”

  “I think he might have been Filipino, but I’m not really sure.”

  “Did you consider him dangerous?”

  Morimoto ponders the question for a moment. “Like I said, he didn’t leave much of an impression.”

  MY BODYGUARD

  Before leaving Providence, I promised Françoise I’d bring backup to the fund-raiser. That pledge turned out to be difficult to satisfy. Unlike Richard Mamarella, I lacked ready access to professional muscle, and I couldn’t see hiring someone to watch me watch my former roommate. In the end, I asked my cousin Ruth MacKay, a lifelong Bay Area local, to join me. She said sure.

  Ruth rings my hotel room from the front desk two hours before the event. “Your bodyguard is here.”

  Measuring five foot two in sensible shoes, Ruth will never be mistaken for, say, T-Ray, Richard Mamarella’s fridge-size sidekick. But with two decades of newspaper experience in and around San Francisco, Ruth is more of an asset than any muscle-bound rent-a-cop.*

  “What are your thoughts about getting a drink?” I ask when we meet in the lobby.

  “I’m part Scot,” she says. “Take a guess.”

  At the hotel bar, I provide a two-whiskey synopsis of the search.

  “Sounds like you have a pretty good grasp on the contours of the con, but what do you have on Cesar?”

  “Three years of his subpoenaed bank and credit card records. I know where he buys his clothes and where he gets them cleaned. I know what brand of bottled water he drinks and where he purchases his booze—a liquor store called Jugs. I can tell you where he pumps iron, where he pumps gas, where he does his banking, where he pays for massages, and where he eats. The convicted shill for the International House of Badische is a regular at the International House of Pancakes.”

  “That’s all great,” says Ruth. “But do you know what makes him tick?”

  “Not really,” I admit. “That’s one of the reasons I flew out here. The files are full of contradictions.”

  “Such as?”

  “I don’t know if he’s rich or poor. He filed for bankruptcy three weeks before he started serving time but he owns a late-model BMW that retails for $63,000.”

  “And you know that how?”

  “A web bot. He’s trying to sell the Beemer on Craigslist.”

  “Is it possible you’re digging too deeply?” Ruth asks.

  “More than possible. It’s a total certainty. I can’t help it. I’ve always been held hostage by my interests. The problem is the more I find out, the less I know. I’m hoping that seeing Cesar will clear up some of the confusion.”

  “Tell me about tonight.”

  “Cesar’s raising money for an indie flick about a photographer who goes missing in Chile during the Pinochet regime.”

  “Is the event legit?”

  “No idea.” I pull out the downloaded Evite and quote from the pitch. “‘Join us on a journey back to childhood,’” I intone, “a story ‘about real memories repressed for twenty years. . . . A pursuit of truth to bring peace to a tortured soul.’”

  “Sounds like the film’s about you, Allen.”

  “I’m not sure about the repressed memories part, but I suspect my tortured soul won’t find peace until I learn more about Cesar. I don’t even know his nationality.”

  “I thought he’s Filipino.”

  “That’s what he told us at school, and that’s what he’s told some clients. But his lawyer claims he’s American.”

  “He could be both,” Ruth notes.

  “Of course. Except the files indicate the INS couldn’t verify his citizenship status while the investigation was under way. And just to complicate things further, he petitioned the Bureau of Prisons to have his ethnicity changed from white to Hispanic.”

  “Any photos?”

  I show Ruth the Belvedere house portrait from 1972.

  “Anything more recent?”

  “Nope. Last time I checked, his online bios all had ‘Image Not Available’ and ‘No photo’ graphics. The website for the film company includes head shots for every staffer except Cesar. He’s represented by a JPEG of a movie clapper.”

  “How about yearbook pictures?”

  “I contacted two universities he attended. Struck out at both.”

  Ruth sips her Scotch and ruminates. “So we’re unsure of his nationality or his ethnicity. We don’t know whether he’s rich or poor, and we have no clue what he looks like.”

  Four head shots that accompanied Cesar’s early postpenitentiary web bios.

  “Yup. Oh, and there’s one more unknown. He might be dangerous.”

  Ruth puts down her drink. “Dangerous?”

  “He’s connected to some pretty nasty characters.”

  “‘Connected’ as in The Godfather connected?”

  “It’s possible. The record indicates he received legal advice from a Gambino associate.”

  “Anything else I need to know?”

  “Just that I won’t be using my real name tonight. Refer to me as Isaac Raven.”

  “Isaac Raven?”

  “It’s something I cooked up with Max and a drinking buddy. Isaac Raven is Cesar’s first and last name, but with the letters rearranged.”

  “Why not scramble your own name?”

  “We tried. I couldn’t see going undercover as Ezra I. Lunkwell. On the other hand, Cesar’s name is an anagrammatical gold mine.”*

  “Fitting for a guy who’s constantly reinventing himself,” Ruth observes.

  “Plus Isaac Raven sounds dark and brooding.”

  Ruth gives a nod. “And it goes well with that ridiculous beard.”

  “I’m shaving it off after the party. Françoise’s orders.”

  “That’s a relief,” Ruth says. And raising her tumbler, she makes a toast. “To Isaac Raven.”

  THE SHILL

  Our nerves calmed by the genial influences of expense-account whiskey, Ruth and I catch a cab to Cesar’s fund-raiser, which is taking place at a Mission District college that grants advanced degrees in political activism and women’s spirituality. We arrive at the venue just as a band of South American musicians is unloading a panel truck.

  “Oh Christ,” says Ruth. “Tambourines.”

  I ask the percussionist if Cesar has arrived. He shakes his head and points to the event’s cohost, a Latina filmmaker in her early forties.

  “Welcome,” she says. “What are your names, please?”

  Ruth says, “Ruth.”

  The cohost turns to me. “And you are . . . ?”

  “I am . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “I am . . .”

  I know what I’m supposed to say. I’m supposed to say, “Hi, I’m Isaac Raven.” But I can’t. I can’t make myself lie, at least not explicitly. Eventually I mumble, “Al.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Al,” I repeat.

  “Hola, Al,” the cohost says. “You and Ruth should get yourselves drinks.”

  Once we’re safely beyond the checkpoint, my cousin gives me a poke. “So what happened, Isaac?”

  “Guess I’m not cut out for fraud.”

  “That’s pretty obvious. But you do know what I have to say now, don’t you?”

  “What?”

  “‘Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”’”

  The setting for the fund-raiser, a gallery space scarred by years of vegetarian potluc
ks, craft fairs, and cooperative art shows, is worlds away from the five-star suites into which Cesar once lured clients. There are no international financiers in matching silk ties raising flutes of vintage champagne. Mostly it’s hipsters in bandannas holding red plastic cups of Two-Buck Chuck.

  Ruth and I grab a couple of drinks at the cash bar, then separate. I strike up a conversation with a self-described radical vegan ecofeminist who teaches yoga and, in his spare time, promotes nonviolence toward animals (“both human and nonhuman”). I ask if he knows Cesar. He does not. My next two informants aren’t much help either. They make vague references to the host’s “real estate deals” and “a life-coaching thing.” Eventually I approach a frail woman seated behind a card table.

  “I’m the mother of the producer,” she informs me proudly.

  It takes a moment to figure out the implications of the claim. “Cesar’s your son?” I blurt out.

  “How do you know my Cesar?”

  “From . . .”—I’m about to say “Aiglon” but stop before I blow my cover—“from the Evite,” I improvise. Totally unprepared, and more than a little ambivalent about interviewing an elderly woman under false pretenses regarding the behavior of her felonious son, I bumble my way through the impromptu exchange that reveals, among other things, that Cesar calls his mother every day, that he takes her for long walks and occasional vacations (to Mexico, most recently), that he drives her to the supermarket, to the cemetery “to visit relatives,” to the dentist, and to her doctors. When I ask the kindly woman about her son’s nationality, I’m told that he is “half Venezuelan, half Asian, half Latino, and half Filipino American,” which, in a way, makes sense since nothing about Cesar adds up.

  I ask about his childhood, hoping to provoke some comments about Aiglon. But my unsuspecting source scrolls back further than I’d like and tells me in considerable detail how she gave birth to her only son in the Manila beauty school owned by her family.

  “Isaac Raven” (left) and me, four hours after my “recon mission,” no longer incognito.

  “What was Manila like?”

  “Easier,” she says with a sigh. “We had servants. A chauffeur. A laundry woman. But that life vanished after Cesar’s father died and we moved to the United States.”

  My discomfort level spikes abruptly—so abruptly, in fact, that I end the interview. (Only much later do I begin to work out why. I think it’s because I’m unwilling to let Cesar’s narrative of youthful trauma bully its way into on my own chronicle of childhood despair.)

  As we part company, I pick up a list of auction items and a business card that Hispanicizes the fund-raiser’s alias. Tonight he is Cesar Augusto Teague.

  List in hand, I survey the artwork hanging on the walls. A doormat-size “meditation rug” donated by Cesar has attracted a silent bid of $250 from “BCG.” I recognize the acronym and handwriting instantly. I’ve seen both on dozens of Barclay Consulting Group discovery documents. I find Ruth and tell her about the connection. “You’re not going to believe this. Cesar is bidding up his own stuff.”

  “Why should that surprise you?” she says matter-of-factly. “Isn’t that what shills are supposed to do?”

  THE SIGHTING

  All at once, my stomach tightens and I unleash a string of expletives.

  Ruth gives me a nudge. “Settle down, Isaac.”

  My brain tries to tell my mouth to heed her advice, but my mouth refuses to obey. “It’s him! Oh my God! Fuck, Ruth. Shit. It’s . . . it’s . . . it’s him!”

  The uncontrolled babbling lasts nearly a minute. The only other time I can recall losing it like that was during the memorial service for a close friend struck down by brain cancer. It’s not grief, however, that’s causing me to spout gibberish. Something else makes me run off at the mouth, though what exactly I can’t say.

  Cesar is no longer kitted out in the “armor” Barbara Laurence described. No Armani suit. No designer eyeglasses. The “double breasted or three-piece suit of high quality design” and “classy writing instrument such as Mont Blanc”—items one and ten of the Badische dress code—have been replaced by a black paisley short-sleeve shirt and a Bic holstered in a pair of pleated Dockers. And like many indie film producers, Cesar is sporting a goatee.

  “How’d you pick him out?” Ruth asks after I have calmed down enough to respond to questions.

  “I’m not sure. All I can tell you is that I knew before I knew.”

  The rattle of a tambourine quiets the audience. The filmmaker gives a brief speech about “bearing witness to the victims of violence” and “the long-term impact of short-term persecution.”

  Ruth jabs me again. “See. It is your story.”

  The lights dim, and a twelve-minute short is screened. It’s somber and a bit too experimental for my tastes but better than I anticipated. After the lights come back on, to scattered applause, the band starts to play.

  For an hour or so, I watch Cesar work the room. His manner is understated. He avoids direct eye contact as he talks to his guests. He keeps to the edges of the gallery. It’s as if the hall were one giant foosball table and he’s looking for an opening, for a chance to score. His demeanor strikes me both as bashful and hypervigilant. Since I can’t hear what he’s saying, it’s impossible to tell if that’s a reflection of shyness or pathology. (I favor the latter explanation.)

  And what about my pathology? Part of me wants to run for the hills. Part of me wants to march across the room and punch Cesar in the nose. The latter impulse is not an option. Not yet anyway. Before I make a move—if I make a move—I will need to establish where Cesar falls on the continuum of criminality. Is he a hapless schnook? A violent sociopath? Was the work he did for Badische a onetime misstep or the tip of the iceberg? I still have no clue.

  The temperature in the gallery turns equatorial once the dancing gets going. My beard, damp with sweat, begins itching unbearably.

  “Hey, Ruth, I think it’s time to leave.”

  My cousin needs no convincing. Out on the street, I’m surprised to spot Cesar taking a break from his own fund-raiser. He’s standing by himself, no more than ten feet away—the distance that once separated our bunks.

  “Ruth, how about a picture?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Stay right there. Don’t move.”

  Ruth registers the firmness in my voice and obeys.

  “Smile.”

  Ruth smiles.

  I aim my phone and snap a photo. Half of my cousin’s overexposed face falls outside the picture, but it doesn’t matter. She’s not the one I have in my sights.

  Cesar Augusto, the indie film producer. My bodyguard (and cousin) Ruth appears in the foreground.

  THE SILENT SERVICE

  Is Cesar a career criminal? Back in Providence, I redouble my efforts to answer that question. Dennis Quilty, the retired investigator, continues to play hard to get, but I have better luck with one of his former colleagues, a US Postal Inspection Service case agent named Thomas Feeney. Enticed by the promise of a fine steak dinner, the former postal inspector agrees to meet me at a New York chop house a week after I return from the recon mission.

  As soon as we’re seated, Agent Feeney pulls out a fat brown envelope.

  “Special delivery?” I joke.

  “My Badische case file,” he responds sternly. But his manner softens as soon as he begins leafing through documents in the envelope. At a certain point he even allows himself a smile.

  “Something funny?”

  “What wasn’t funny about Badische?” he says. “Personally, my favorite character was the Baron Moncrieffe, Crown Prince of Serbia, born George Englert Jr., to a hotel night manager from Toledo, Ohio. What a voice that guy had. Part Ronald Reagan, part Jackie O. Hadn’t done a legitimate job since the Eisenhower administration.”

  “He worked?”

  Feeney consults his files. “He was as a window dresser at Garfinckel’s department store in Passaic during the nineteen fifties.”

&
nbsp; “An actual window dresser? A prosecutor I interviewed used that exact phrase—window dressing—to describe the Trust’s attention to detail.”

  Feeney nods. “All the crazy costumes the guys wore, the fake passports, the bogus deeds.”

  “How did you end up getting assigned to the case?”

  “Quilty reached out for help executing subpoenas and filing forms. He could have used the FBI, but he preferred working with us. The guys in the windbreakers tend to be ball hogs. Quilty had no patience for their showboating. He worked for convictions, not press conferences and photo ops. Postal inspectors tend to be the same. There’s a reason we’re called the Silent Service.”

  {© Larry Ghiorsi, Senior Technical Surveillance Specialist, New York Division, U.S. Postal Inspection Service}

  Ex–Postal Inspector Thomas Feeney.

  Well, not that silent, thank goodness. By the end of the meal, Feeney has provided a guided tour of his case file. Here are a few highlights from my notes:

  •Subpoenas served (PS Forms MC 2001–0415, 416, and 599), May 17, 2001. Feeney executes writs to produce documents. Retrieves evidence from PO boxes and residences of Moncrieffe and Sherry.

  •Case registered (PS Form 623), June 8, 2001. Badische investigation officially “on the books” of US Postal Inspection Service.

  •Performance Guaranty monies received (bank check), July 11, 2001. Feeney takes custody of funds frozen in Badische client accounts managed by Gurland. (“It was strange walking around with a check for $1,222,526.39.”)

  •Warrants issued, November 7, 2001. One day after prosecutors indict Cesar et al., Feeney enters arrest data into NCIC database.