The Man in the Rockefeller Suit

by Mark Seal

  She was questioned as to whether she had ever asked her husband directly if he might not consider “selling off a painting” and perhaps “put a couple million dollars away.” Of course, she had asked him to sell a painting many times, she replied. “I was pretty shocked when, after he spent all of our money and refused to save any of it, that he then suddenly said, ‘No, we’re not going to sell a painting.’ ”

  Still, she stayed with him, steadfastly attempting to hold her family together in the waning months of 2006. She had gotten him to move to Boston, and Snooks was happily enrolled in school—no longer in pre-kindergarten but, thanks to her father’s influence, in first grade. “He said he would stop micromanaging her and we would share in her care, that he would basically let her have friends, that he would act like a normal human being,” Sandra said. “But that was not true.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Peach Melba Nights

  Once Snooks was safely on the school bus, Rockefeller would stroll east on Beacon Street to the Starbucks on the corner, where he soon attached himself to a group consisting of lawyers, researchers, businesspeople, and a local architect who got together for coffee on their way to work. They had a name for themselves: Cafe Society. I went to that Starbucks one morning, and the group was easy to spot—a convivial bunch of men and women in the middle of the store. When I introduced myself, they seemed quite ready to speak about the man who had become a Beacon Hill fixture as easily as he had obtained a new e-mail address (Clark@Beacon-Hill.net).

  One morning, they recalled, the aristocrat in the Izod shirt had been out of breath when he arrived, having stopped at his house on Pinckney Street after dropping off Snooks at the bus. According to Bob Skorupa, a lawyer, “He said, ‘I’m exhausted. I’ve just pushed an armoire up to the fifth floor of my house.’ That’s how he integrated himself. You immediately knew he had a five-story house.”

  With Snooks on his shoulders, they said, Clark was soon a familiar sight in the neighborhood, heading home or to church, or to karate classes, or to lunch at the Algonquin Club. If Snooks was given the kids’ menu, the little girl would snap, much to her father’s clear approval, “We are adults. We would like adult menus.”

  As the Starbucks group got to know him, they came to like him and accept his eccentricities, because, after all, he was a Rockefeller. He told the coffee klatch that he had been the inspiration for the smart, effete character Dr. Niles Crane on the TV series Frasier. When the other Starbucks regulars rushed off to work, Clark would linger, because he really had no place to go.

  Patrick Hickox, with his degree from the Yale School of Architecture, was known for designing homes and buldings on the East Coast. He wore his hair long, dressed in a boldly striped jacket, and spoke with a Yankee flourish. Of his friend Clark, he told me, “He said he was extremely good at thinking through processes and problems. He described himself as having been involved with the military, essentially as a contractor, and said he had benefited financially from the two Iraq wars. I never got too deeply into it, although on a couple of occasions we talked about projects he had worked on. Clark was not one to boast about his accomplishments.”

  Bob Skorupa, the attorney, added, “One day he said there was a sled or a rocket out in New Mexico, on some military base, and it had blown up and somebody died. He said, ‘I designed that.’ I hadn’t read anything about it, but afterwards I went and looked, and buried deep in Google was a story about some accident with a rocket. Some guy had died. So that really happened.”

  John Greene, a dark-haired, blunt-talking businessman, picked up the thread. “Once, he was going to New York, and he said he could catch a ride on a CIA or Navy transport plane.” Greene smiled. “Cool. He had those kinds of connections.”

  One reason they believed him was that he was a member of the Algonquin ClUb, a refuge of the upper classes since 1886. It stood imposingly on 217 Commonwealth Avenue, just a short stroll from the Starbucks, and Rockefeller somehow let it slip that he was not merely a member, but a director, of the club. On several occasions he invited his newfound friends to join him there. “It was quite splendid,” said Hickox, “and as far as I could discern, the people there were very fond of him. He was a bit eccentric, but rather modestly so. Clark was cordial and amusing to the staff, and they were clearly affectionate.”

  I asked him if he recalled any specific instances of Rockefeller’s interacting with other members at the club. “My understanding is that he gave an introduction to the German consul general—introduced him in a speech . . . in German,” said Hickox. “Clark was a lively, very compelling conversationalist.”

  They all agreed that the aristos at the Algonquin, a number of them related to real Rockefellers, never questioned his identity. “He invited Bob and me to go the Algonquin,” said Greene. “His name was up on the wall—as an officer. You think he would pay for breakfast, since nonmembers can’t pay. But the next day, he asked us for the money.”

  “Yankee thrift—that would be typical of the Rockefellers,” Hickox explained. “John D. was famous for his thrift, and Clark was very, very reluctant to go out and have an expensive dinner.” When they did go out for drinks, Hickox said, “Clark would often just get a soda water, because that would not even appear on the charge. It made him very uncomfortable to spend money.”

  “When you walked into this fancy-schmancy club, there in the hall was the board of directors, officers of the club, and his name was up there prominently. I saw John Silber there,” said Greene, referring to the noted author, philosopher, and academic who was president of Boston University for twenty-five years. “I admired the guy, and Clark said, ‘I can have you introduced.’ And he tapped the shoulder of a big shot, an officer of the club, who took me over and introduced me to John Silber! He went in there and established himself. At a club like that, people get a hard-on over the name Rockefeller.”

  Clark invited the Starbucks group to join him for the Algonquin’s New Year’s party in 2006, complete with ballroom dancing, a multicourse dinner, champagne, and a midnight rendition of “Auld Lang Syne.” Rockefeller’s table was front and center, filled with his friends from Starbucks, as well as other members of the Algonquin—the king and his growing court.

  I asked Thomas Lee, the Boston police superintendent, about Rockefeller’s reputation at the Algonquin Club. He said he had interviewed many of the club’s members and came away absolutely certain that they had been duped.

  “He was well accepted,” Lee replied. “Now, of course, the people there have said, ‘Oh, yeah, we knew he wasn’t this or that.’ But believe me, he had them fooled.”

  “How did he do it?” I asked.

  “A con man gets by because you want to believe what he’s telling you. That’s how a con works. People already have their preconceptions, and he just plays into what they’re thinking.”

  The more I talked with people, the more I knew I had to see the Algonquin Club for myself. But my social contacts in Boston, which were not at all shabby, just shook their heads when I asked them to pull strings or make introductions. In the end, I decided to gain entry the same way Rockefeller had: through a reciprocal membership in another private club. The only club I belonged to was a spa in Colorado, with absolutely no reciprocal benefits, called the Aspen Club and Spa. I asked the concierge at my hotel to call the Algonquin and reserve a table for one for dinner that night.

  “Tell them that I am a reciprocal member from the Aspen Club,” I said, leaving off the last part of the name. The concierge called the Algonquin, then cupped the phone and told me, “She said they’d love to have you, but you’ll have to pay for dinner and drinks by credit card.” I nodded agreement. “Then eight p.m. for one,” the concierge told the person on the other end of the line.

  It was a vast gray multistory building with valet car parkers and gaslights blazing out front, as they had been blazing for a century and more. I walked into a small lobby, where a woman sat behind a desk. There was a board with the names of the dire
ctors on it, and I noticed that Clark Rockefeller’s name had been removed.

  “Good evening, Mr. Seal! And how are things at the Aspen Club?” asked the receptionist.

  “Quite fine,” I said. “Can you direct me to the bar?”

  As I walked across the lobby toward the bar, I took a quick detour through the private dining rooms, named for members—the Calvin Coolidge Room, the Daniel Webster Room. There were paintings of yachts and portraits of the men for whom the rooms were named. I soon realized that the eyes of the Algonquin were on me. No one seemed to question that I was anything less than an equal, starting with the older couple having cocktails in the Marlboro Lounge, where a waiter brought me a drink and I nibbled cheese from a silver tray and wiled away an hour making light cocktail conversation. “Mr. Rockefeller would eat here or in the dining room,” a waiter in the Members’ Bar told me. When I asked if they all assumed he was a real Rockefeller, the waiter replied, “He was a member. So nobody asked.”

  I walked upstairs to the dining room, a huge space with paneled walls, paintings, pewter chandeliers, four fireplaces, and massive picture windows. A waiter in a tuxedo approached my table, and I asked what Clark Rockefeller usually ordered for dinner.

  “The smoked salmon appetizer and, sometimes, the Dover sole.”

  “I’ll have it,” I replied.

  As the efficient waiters and busboys served me, I asked them about Rockefeller. Though he had been a director of the club, they said, he had eventually let his membership lapse. “He was here on a reciprocal, just like you,” one of them said. How he got to be a member, no one knew. “You’re either sponsored or you just come in and fill out an application. We knew he was a member of a prominent family,” the server went on. “He was always Clark Rockefeller! Everyone seemed to like him. Nobody questioned anything.”

  I returned to the Algonquin another evening. That night, a younger crowd showed up. Men in preppy clothes with their wives or girlfriends were seated in the dining room. A few business types played billiards in the Members’ Bar. As they cavorted and conversed, they were all secure in the knowledge that they were among their own kind.

  It wasn’t just men who fell into Rockefeller’s growing sphere of influence and entertainment in Boston. Women were soon jumping onto the joyride as well. Another member of the early-morning Starbucks coffee group, a woman named Amy Patt, testified to the grand jury about Rockefeller’s irresistible gravitational pull. She was at the Southfield bus stop one morning, her infant in a stroller while she took her daughter to the school bus, when a well-dressed stranger came bounding up from the park across the street. “Don’t you look pretty today!” he exclaimed, introducing himself as Clark Rockefeller.

  After seeing each other twice a day with their daughters at the bus stop, Clark and Amy became friends. They began meeting for a post–bus stop coffee at Starbucks and soon various other places around town, including the Algonquin. According to Boston magazine, they decided to “merge” their respective creative talents by writing what would quickly evolve into an eighteen-episode script for a sitcom based on the Starbucks coffee club, which Rockefeller entitled Less Than Proper. Of course, he planned to star in the TV series; to prepare for his television debut, he began taking classes at a local comedy center.

  As the pair wrote the sitcom, it was clear that Rockefeller wanted their friendship to deepen. “He would say silly things like, ‘Oh, Amy, Amy, Amy, we should have children together,’ ” she recalled. “‘You’re so smart and our children would be so brilliant!’”

  As for his wife, Sandra Boss, who always seemed to be away on business, Rockefeller had only disparaging comments. So Amy presumed his marriage was over, and that he was the one who wanted out. Of course, he gave her his standard New York City/Yale blue-blooded bio, only with some specially tailored embellishments. “He said he went to school with the writers of the Frasier character on the sitcom,” Amy said, referring to the persnickety Dr. Frasier Winslow Crane, played by Kelsey Grammer. “And said he was involved in weaponry of some sort; ballistics and things.”

  She had no reason to disbelieve him. And while their relationship didn’t go any deeper than friendship, she looked forward to their time together. “He was really energetic and flirty and just sort of fun to be around,” she said.

  To hear more about Rockefeller’s sway over young women, I called the architect Patrick Hickox. One night he picked me up at the hotel in his convertible BMW and took me to dinner at B&G Oysters, where, he explained, he and Clark had often dined together.

  “Clark has a tremendous, passionate eye for beautiful women,” the architect said on the way to the restaurant. “And he seeks them out with great skill and charm.”

  That was how the two men met. “It was a large black-tie event.” Hickox was there with his wife and “a very beautiful employee, whom I imagine Clark must have spotted at a considerable distance.” Immaculately attired in his J. Press tuxedo, Rockefeller introduced himself, and the threesome quickly became a foursome. After the gala they retired to the bar in the Boston Ritz—now the Taj Boston—where, entertained by Rockefeller’s endless anecdotes, they partied until five in the morning.

  “Then we walked over—my employee was still there—to Clark’s house on Beacon Hill. It was remarkably spare—hardly any furnishings at all—but with an extraordinary abundance of paintings, most of them not exhibited, but in enormous tubes.”

  “Did you believe the paintings were real?” I asked.

  “I had no reason to think otherwise. They were by major people—Rothko and, I believe, Motherwell. It was quite a fantastic collection,” said Hickox.

  A close friendship ensued. “At one point, some people were questioning his identity and being derogatory about it. I said, ‘Clark, I wouldn’t pay that any mind. You are your last great story, your most recent trenchant analysis, the witticism you let float in the air. That’s who you are.’ ”

  Once we were seated in B&G Oysters and the wine was ordered, Hickox commented on Rockefeller’s good points: his volunteer work in the community, helping people and nonprofit organizations by setting up and servicing their computers. Rockefeller was so proficient with computers he almost had “telepathy” with them, Hickox said. He never paid by credit card, only cash. The architect said he chalked it up to being “an ideological thing,” that the man from the famous family had been taught to distrust credit. After all, he seemed finely attuned to the stock market, even e-mailing Hickox in the spring of 2008, before the American financial meltdown began that fall, “There is tremendous danger in the market. Get out of the stock market and go into commodities, into gold.”

  As Hickox ordered two oysters each of six varieties, I asked him how Rockefeller had fit in with the Starbucks group. “Oh, he was lovely, provocative,” he said. “On occasion we’d talk very seriously about business, invention, and technology. But fundamentally this was a divertissement , for amusement. We talked about cars, anything. Clark has a profound love of music, ranging from torch singers to great opera, to opéra bouffe—the light opera of nineteenth-century France. We had a little group of two, where we would whistle in very complex harmonies. We named our group the Whistlepoofs, after the Whiffenpoofs of Yale. I lent him recordings of all of the Whiffenpoofs of the entire twentieth century, which he then put into digital form and returned the CDs.”

  Taking a sip of Chablis, he said, “Clark adored the music of Cole Porter.”

  “Which songs?” I asked.

  “Oh, I can tell you one he especially loved—‘From This Moment On,’ which is a very beautiful song, really the embodiment of the quintessential brilliance of Cole Porter: to take a line, a little phrase, a particle of speech, and create a small universe of it. Clark loved diction, language.”

  We sipped more wine and hummed a few bars of the Cole Porter classic, about a world that turns on a dime on account of a beautiful woman. “One night, Clark came over and he had nine versions of the song,” Hickox said. “We listened to
them all, and he tested us on them as to who the singers were. Tough test.”

  It wasn’t just American music; Rockefeller had a broad range in tastes, stretching to the obscure. “He’s the only person I know who could play the didgeridoo, which is an extraordinary Aboriginal wind instrument. A long, long horn. One night—God knows why—I asked him if he played this instrument, and he got up, ran over to his house, and within minutes came back with an eight-foot-long horn, which he then played with extraordinary resonance and power.”

  Hickox was just warming up. “On Saturday mornings, even when we’d been out late the night before, he’d make it a practice to read to children at the Athenaeum. He was an excellent reader. He was a true connoisseur.”

  “And a true con,” I said.

  “I actually don’t like the word ‘con,’” said Hickox. “I mean, you are allowed to use that word, but it is not a word I would use. There is no question that this person over time presented a variety of personalities, but I never thought of him as being a person of multiple personalities or any of that.”

  The oysters arrived on a bed of ice on a tin tray. “I think there’s a concept of this person as not being real,” Hickcox said. “But there’s no doubt that this was somebody who was loving and caring. And I’m sure that other people have described the care and attention that he had for his little girl. Not in an obsessive way. There’s little doubt for me that he was a caring father. His love for his daughter was moving. I think the love for his daughter was the most central reality in his life.”

  “Maybe the only reality,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t say that, because I think many, many things were real for Clark. And I hesitate to say this, but it may be that to some extent, for Clark, things that are imaginary were very, very real. That’s why the con man description may be really off. This was somebody who might be involved with changing the world intellectually.”