Whipping Boy

by Allen Kurzweil

  “And at Aiglon? Were your intentions ‘good’ there, too?”

  “You shouldn’t focus on Aiglon. Think about the good times before you went there. That’s where you should target your energies. Let the positive memories overwhelm the negative ones. Don’t harp on the bad stuff. That’s what I try to do.” Cesar’s tone turns conciliatory. “I’m glad we’ve had a chance to clear the air. I’m just sorry I don’t remember more.”

  “That’s okay,” I tell him. “I remember enough for the two of us.”

  “THERE. WAS. NO. TRUST.”

  Our conversation doesn’t end there. After working through my shortlist of juvenile complaint, I turn again to Badische. But before the gloves come off, I tell Cesar I know far more about his criminal career than I’ve been letting on. That I am, in fact, thoroughly versed in the details of the fraud.

  My disclosure doesn’t seem to rattle him. And whatever the reason—obtuseness, chutzpah, friendship, nostalgia, amnesia, confidence, naïveté, delusion—he has no qualms answering a whole new set of questions about his ties to the Trust.

  I jump right in. After recapping what I know about his client Barbara Laurence, I ask if she complained to him directly before reaching out to the authorities.

  “Sure. Many times.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “What can I do?” Cesar says, again privileging the present tense to describe a decade-old crime. “I’m not in control. Barbara Laurence is the one who started the whole thing. She can’t meet the conditions of the loan agreement, so she complains to the prosecutor. The next thing I know, the prosecutor goes after me.”

  “You’re saying he made you the fall guy?”

  “Exactly. They needed to fry me to prove conspiracy.”

  “Yeah, about that, Cesar. That’s not how things work.”

  “Yes, it is,” he insists. “When you have five defendants, the government can ignore legal procedure. Rules get thrown out the window. That’s why I was indicted.”

  “No, it’s not.” I resist the urge to quote Black’s Law Dictionary, which defines conspiracy as “a combination or confederacy between two or more persons.”

  “What about Quilty?”

  “Quilty. Quilty. Quilty,” Cesar says. “I know that name.”

  “Dennis Quilty. The investigator who helped put you in jail.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  I ask Cesar if he realized Prince Robert was a career swindler.

  “He wasn’t a swindler when I first met him.”

  “Yes, Cesar, he was. Do you know about Colonia?”

  “What’s Colonia?”

  “An imaginary micronation Robert helped establish three hundred miles from Manila.”

  “Sorry, Allen. I’m pretty good at geography. I’ve never heard of the place.”*

  “It was part of a passport mill he operated around the time he began claiming to be the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta.”

  “Wow. You know a lot.”

  “Guilty as charged,” I say. “Oh, and while we’re discussing Manila, I’ve been meaning to ask. What was it like living under the specter of an eighteen-year lawsuit?”

  “What lawsuit?”

  “The lawsuit caused by the fire.”

  “What fire?”

  “The one that broke out next to your family’s beauty school. The one that took the lives of four students.”

  “This is the first I’ve heard about a fire or a lawsuit.”

  I move on. “Were you aware that the Badische scam was an exact blueprint of a fraud that Brian Sherry’s father pulled off in Europe?”

  “What? When?”

  “In the mideighties. The earlier version was called the Nikon Trust. It used the same loan agreements as Badische and required the same performance guaranties. It even included a guy claiming to work for Barclays.”

  “I don’t know anything about that. But I can tell you what I do know. I reviewed all the Trust agreements signed by my clients.”

  {© Rob Walker}

  Before Robert served as the figurehead of the Badische Trust Consortium, he helped run a passport mill associated with the Kingdom of Colonia, a nonexistent micronation located three hundred miles from Manila.

  I ask about Richard Mamarella.

  “Who?”

  “The Mob-connected fixer Prince Robert hired. The guy who broke his wife’s arm, swindled a New Jersey bank out of $22 million, and underwrote a life insurance policy on a drug dealer who then got whacked.”

  “Mamarella wasn’t part of Badische.”

  “Yes, he was.”

  “I never met him.”

  I ask Cesar if he feels bad about his clients’ losses.

  “Look. You’re always going to have people who will say good things about you and people who don’t have positive things to say.” I’m reminded of Laurence’s less than positive assessment: “A schmucky, nebbishy lying sack of shit.”

  I ask if he still thinks about Badische.

  “Sure. All the time. Like three days ago, I’m lying on my couch, trying to rest, and my wife says she’s going on a trip for business and staying in a six-hundred-dollar-a-night suite. And I start thinking, wow, six hundred bucks! That’s how much my room was in Zurich when I was with the Badische thing. And then my minds starts in with, what if I had testified?”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Are you kidding? I would love to have testified! I was dying to testify! But my lawyers and my family all told me not to. They said that I’m too emotional. That I’m too defensive.”

  I ask about his drug-smuggling troubles.

  “Norway had nothing to do with Badische, but they would have used it against me.”

  I ask about his longtime friendship with Brian Sherry. “Do you think he was a colonel?”

  “That’s how he was introduced.”

  “Maybe. But it was total bullshit. I have a copy of his military records. Sherry was discharged from the army for ‘financial hardship.’ He was a private first class.”

  Cesar shrugs.

  “Is it possible that Sherry lied to you?”

  “Sure, it’s possible.”

  I ask Cesar how his home address found its way on to the retainer check Sherry wrote to Rogers & Wells, the law firm absorbed by Clifford Chance.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Do you know that Sherry ripped off John Kearns while his wife was dying of multiple myeloma?”

  “That’s insane.”

  “Were you at your trial?”

  “Of course.”

  “Kearns testified about it.”

  “I don’t remember that.”

  When I note that the fraud netted some $4 million, Cesar scoffs. “There was no $4 million.”

  “Yes, Cesar, there was. Sherry laundered at least that much through personal bank accounts all over the world.”

  “They weren’t personal bank accounts. They were Trust accounts.”

  “No, Cesar. They were personal accounts.”

  “The Trust wouldn’t—”

  “Cesar. Listen to me. There. Was. No. Trust. The Trust was a myth.”

  “What about the finance committee? The Swiss bankers? The lawyers at Clifford Chance?”

  “Window dressing.”

  Cesar releases a long sigh. “Okay. Let’s say I’m full of shit. Let’s say I’m totally guilty. That means Sherry’s totally guilty, too. And that he’s more guilty than I am.”

  “He is totally guilty. That’s why he went to prison. And yeah, he is probably more guilty than you.”

  “All I know is I didn’t get paid.”

  After sustaining an hour of cat-and-mouse, I look Cesar straight in the eye and ask point-blank, “Were you guilty of fraud?”

  “No! I am not guilty of fraud.”

  “The jury disagreed,” I counter calmly.

  “Juries don’t make decisions based on fact. They make decisions based on emotions. But hey, that’s the way the cookie crumbles.”
/>   “THERE IS NO TIME”

  A huge sense of relief washes over me after coming clean. I have shed the pretense of friendship and have challenged Cesar head-on about his criminal transactions. Of even greater consequence: I have defended the ten-year-old, or more precisely the ten-year-old has defended himself. He has confronted his childhood menace. Mission accomplished, I tell myself as I leave the café. Case closed. No further action required.

  Wrong. Cesar calls soon after we part company. I decide not to answer. I assume he wants to vent. Hell, he has every reason to vent; he was just blindsided with a one-two punch of childhood and adult recrimination.

  He leaves a voicemail on my phone. When I play it back, I discover, once again, that he confounds expectation. Here’s a full transcription of his message:

  Hi, Allen. Cesar. It’s one fifteen, about. I’m back home. Just realized that the most important thing hasn’t been said. And that is that I apologize to you for whatever pain I may have caused. I’m sorry about that. I really didn’t realize until you told me that you’ve been looking for me since ’91, and how important this is for you. I fully respect that. I know how it feels because, as I told you, I’m also still dealing with it myself—still looking for closure.

  So, I apologize to you.

  I was very nice . . . It was nice to discuss your issues and mine as well. [Badische is] of course painful to bring up again and revisit. But thanks for doing that. We’ll see, we’ll see what happens.

  And oh, by the way, Norway was totally my fault. I went to visit my buddy Lars, and he asked me to bring him some cocaine, which I did. Everything was fine until the evening when they arrested everybody. Of course I denied it. The police tricked [Lars] and told him that I’d admitted it. And he thought, me being such a nice guy, that I did. But I didn’t. I brought it [the coke] for him. (I took some for myself—but not much. I’m not a big drug user.) But bottom line is it was my fault. I was in for fourteen months in a country with a different language. It was interesting.

  Then I find myself some ten years later back at a trial and not expressing my side of the story and being very frustrated to this day about not [testifying]. I was advised by five different people not to take the stand. That I would be just too emotional. That the jury would convict me based on my emotions and not because of any facts. Irrespective of everything else, it just doesn’t look good on paper. Half the stuff you’re telling me, I’m not even aware of. Of course, all this comes out after the fact, but anyway. It’s worth talking some more about, certainly for me.

  I don’t know if you’re writing anything about it or doing anything about it—probably not—but I hope you get closure on your book. And for yourself. I think that’s very important.

  So I just want to call you and apologize for anything that may have happened in the past. It may seem like a long time ago, but it’s still perfectly valid and very important. Because there is no Time. We created—Man created Time. There is no such thing as time.

  And I’m happy to be able to assist you. Call me anytime you want to talk further. I’m honored that you came out here just to talk to me. Okay, thank you.

  After listening to the voicemail, I find myself overwhelmed by a primal urge to run—an urge I satisfy by scrambling up a hill overlooking San Francisco Bay. At the summit, surrounded by a dozen frolicking dogs and their owners, I replay the message while catching my breath.

  I apologize.

  Cesar’s simple, all-powerful avowal strikes like a thunderbolt, releasing me from a prison of vengeance that I’ve inhabited since the Nixon administration.

  Ω

  The first few times I listened to Cesar’s mea culpa, I heard what I want to hear. What I needed to hear—the remorse of a man whose childhood degradations changed my life forever. The deeper consequences of his equivocal recording only emerged later, back in Providence.

  After much deliberation, I figured out what now seems absurdly obvious. The search for Cesar had always been, at its core, a search for someone else. Observing him through a two-way mirror for as long as I had ultimately enabled me to catch reflections of myself in the glass. And who stared back? A victim. An obsessive. A boyfriend. A husband. A father. A journalist. A completionist. A stalker. A frightened five-year-old gripping the hand of a dying father.

  Cesar found himself in my crosshairs because of a timepiece once owned by that dying father. Boarding-school cruelties, however baroque, cannot explain my sustained fixation. Nor can the jaw-dropping fraud that landed Cesar in prison. (The dirty-rotten-scoundreldom of the Badische Trust Consortium was never anything more than a detour, albeit one embellished by some truly amazing props.)

  Part talisman, part shield, the lost Omega was also—how else to put it?—a time machine, a device that transported me back to a moment when my family was intact and I was profoundly happy.

  So forgive me if I reject the notion that there’s no such thing as Time. Without Time, we cannot remember. Without Time, we cannot learn. Without Time, we cannot heal.

  When I told Françoise and Max that I was sending Cesar packing, they were overjoyed—for themselves and for me. He, we all agreed, had overstayed his welcome. And they marked his long-delayed eviction by giving me an extravagant gift. I am wearing it on my wrist.

  {Courtesy of Edith Kurzweil}

  Me, age three. My father took this photo of me in Villars, Switzerland, the year before he died.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  An alpine trek lasting some forty years—okay, half that, if one pinpoints its start to my return visit to Aiglon in 1991—is bound to generate a mountain of indebtedness. The list of thanks that follows, while lengthy, is not, I’m sure, complete. I apologize in advance for any omissions.

  There has never been anything neutral about my Switzerland. Although this chronicle was born out of trauma, it has been offset by countless acts of generosity rooted in, and routed through, the village of Villars and the precincts of Aiglon College. I spent just 304 days at Aiglon—from September 1, 1971, to the following July 4—yet even now, I can recite the morning roll call of Belvedere (“Aikman, Anderson, Benjamin, Blane . . . Kiefer M., Kiefer T., Kurzweil!” . . . “HERE!”). I am grateful to most, though obviously not all, the boys whose names I carry around in my head. Memories of the school—for reasons made clear at the outset of this book—reverberate like the haunting echo of the mountain yodeler, except that the reverb seems to defy physics by growing louder and more distinct over distance and time. This is due, in no small part, to the hundreds of conversations I have had with many Aiglon alums. Special thanks, in this regard, go to Erik Friedl, Christopher Grove, Doug Hillen, Nino Zamero, Rana Sahni, Wes Green, Andreas Kehl, Harold Summers, Joe Lasheen, Sandro Corsini, Sabina Hickmet, Michael Feron, and the late John Vornle. The catalog of helpful teachers and administrators I encountered at Aiglon is just as long, and includes: Rachel Davies, Joelle du Lac, Karen Sandri, Patrick Roberts, Group Captain Watts, Tony Hyde, Norman Perryman, Elizabeth and Theodore Senn, Phillip and Bibi Parsons.

  Among the witnesses who testified at the trial of the Badische boys and their principal shill, three warrant special mention: John Kearns, Barbara Laurence, and David L. Glass. Each one helped clarify the often confusing testimony generated in United States of America v. Brian D. Sherry et al., 01 CR 1043. Yosh Morimoto, another of Cesar’s victimized clients, although absent from the court proceedings, also furnished important insights into the protocols of the Badische Trust Consortium.

  Not all those duped by the convicted hustlers wished to be quoted by name. I have honored those requests. However, I have not, despite current editorial custom, “changed names and identifying details.” No facts that appear in this book have been finessed. No identities have been modified. Nothing good comes from taking such liberties—especially when one’s efforts are focused on a narrative steeped in falsehood and deception. Wherever possible I have verified memories and statements—my own, Cesar’s, and those of the individuals dragged into the fra
ud—against the court record and other reliable sources, both public and private.

  While trying to make sense of the swindle, and the federal case that brought it to light, I was helped by three former assistant US attorneys—Timothy J. Coleman, Jay K. Musoff, and Alexander H. Southwell—as well as Dennis M. Quilty, the relentless criminal investigator who pieced together the evidence the government produced at trial. Officers from the US Postal Inspection Service further helped flesh out the criminal activities of the Badische boys. In particular, I am grateful to three first-class postal inspectors: John Feiter, Thomas Boyle, and Thomas Feeney. I am also beholden to two senior partners from the firm of Debevoise & Plimpton—John H. Hall and Mark P. Goodman—and to Mark’s longtime legal secretary, Diane Bletterman.

  Dozens of research institutions assisted me during this investigation. Of particular note: the John Carter Brown Library (under the aegis of its former director Ted Widmer and current deputy director Margot Nishimura); the Rockefeller Library at Brown University; the New York Public Library (and, more specifically, Pamela Leo, formerly of the Center for Scholars and Writers); and the Providence Athenaeum, a once dormant member-supported library recently reawakened under the stewardship of Christina Bevilacqua and Alison Maxell.

  Even though a list of photographic credits appears elsewhere, I would like to offer special thanks to: Matt Sherwin, for schlepping to a Manila slum to take pictures of Cesar’s childhood mail drop; Mathias Braschler, for graciously allowing me to reproduce his timeless portrait of the Prince and Princess Khimchiachvili; Harold Summers and Patrick Roberts, for forwarding hi-res versions of images originally posted on the web; Norman Perryman and Bret Bertholf, for permitting me to reproduce their art; Erik Friedl (again), for digitizing stills from the 16mm film he shot at Aiglon College in 1972; Patrick Conner, for his beautifully composed still life of the Cesareum; US Postal Service Senior Technical Surveillance Specialist Larry Ghorsi, for unearthing an image of his colleague Thomas Feeney; Bruce Metcalf of the Augustan Society, for allowing me to reprint a genealogy establishing the ties between “Prince” Robert to Count Dracula—a genealogy that Guy Stair Sainty, with equal aplomb, has discredited; and finally Rob Walker, an illustrator and designer whose digital competencies find expression throughout this book.