Whipping Boy (12 page)

My mother contributes to the electronic birdsong. “I’m watching CNN,” she informs me breathlessly from the comfort of her overheated Manhattan apartment. “A blizzard is hitting the city!”

“I know, Mom. I’m in it.” The weather app on my phone informs me the Northeast is under assault by a meteorological anomaly called thundersnow.

When the train reaches Penn Station, I call to reconfirm my appointment with Goodman. No one picks up. I catch a subway anyway, make it uptown with forty minutes to spare, and bide the time by devouring a large tub of rice pudding at a deli across from Goodman’s firm.

Shortly before my ten a.m. meeting, I finagle two plastic bags from a cashier, tie them over my oxfords, and brave the winter squall. The knee-deep snow makes it nearly impossible to cross Third Avenue. My pants are soaked, my hair is dripping, and my toes are throbbing by the time I enter the reception area of Debevoise & Plimpton. The rice pudding starts to rebel as I take a seat.

I try to hide my discomfort by bending over the Cesareum, which I’ve lugged into the city to confirm, if confirmation becomes necessary, the legitimacy of my inquiry. Ten minutes go by before I notice something that ratchets up my self-consciousness: I’m guessing very few visitors enter the number one law firm in the nation wearing white plastic bags on their feet.

At ten thirty, I’m still cooling my heels, now liberated from their makeshift galoshes, and wondering if Goodman is blowing me off.
The receptionist can’t (or won’t) say. She can’t (or won’t) even tell me if he is in the building. Maybe he’s spending the morning sledding with his kids. Or maybe he’s decided that attorney-client privilege precludes granting me access to the files. Every time the receptionist talks into her headset, I imagine Goodman on the other end telling her, “I don’t
care
. Just get rid of the guy.”

At ten forty, a compact woman approaches and introduces herself. “Diane. Mark’s assistant. Mark’s in the middle of a big report. He can’t get away right now.”

“I can wait.”

“No, that’s not going to happen,” Diane informs me brusquely. Before I have a chance to protest, she says, “Come.”

I follow her down a long corridor, up an internal staircase, down another long corridor, and into a room dominated by a conference table rimmed by a dozen chairs. Plate-glass windows on the far side of the room offer up a tempestuous view of the Manhattan skyline intermittently accentuated by lightning bolts. My focus, however, locks onto an even more electrifying prospect: a ziggurat of document boxes stacked at one end of the table.

“I’ve set out the chron logs,” Diane says, pointing to a pile of binders. “You may want to start there. Then, if I were you, I’d work through the Redwelds.”

Chron logs? Redwelds? Now’s not the time to ask questions. I nod and say, “Great.”

“Okay then,” she says. “Knock yourself out.” And without another word, she leaves.

The moment I’m alone, I begin my excavations. As instructed, I start with the “chron logs”—chronologically arranged lists of every memo, order, judgment, motion, declaration, decision, petition, and
letter that has flowed in and out of the law firm regarding the matter of “George R. Englert, a/k/a ‘George Crombie Moncrieffe,’ a/k/a ‘Dr. Moncrieffe,’ a/k/a ‘Baron Moncrieffe,’ a/k/a ‘Prince George.’”

Because Cesar rates barely a mention, I get through the registers swiftly. I then turn to the Redweld folders—so named, it only dawns on me much later, because of their color (red) and the brass rivets that reinforce the seams. The Redwelds contain dozens of briefs, some of which are typeset and bound like paperbacks. Given my allergy to legal papers, they quickly join the chron logs at the far end of the conference table.

That leaves the ziggurat itself—fourteen cartons of documents relating to the prosecution of the Badische Trust Consortium. The outside markings do nothing to clarify the contents. I grab the carton at the peak of the pyramid and pop the lid. Inside, I find copies of bank records, subpoenas, phone bills, business plans, canceled checks, and monthly credit card statements. There is no order to the stuff; everything appears to have been dumped into the carton higgledy-piggledy. (I guess that’s what happens when a client pleads guilty and trial prep comes to a halt.)

It’s almost noon by the time I get through the first box. Since I have a lunch date with John scheduled for twelve thirty p.m., even a perfunctory review of the remaining material is impossible. I disassemble the pyramid, arrange the cartons in a single row, and remove the lids. My worst fears are confirmed. The uninspected cartons are every bit as jumbled as the one I’ve just examined.

Fourteen cartons. Each one is roughly the size of a five-thousand-sheet box of photocopy paper. That means—I make a quick calculation—seventy thousand documents!

Diane reappears to let me know that John is heading over. “So? Find what you were looking for?”

“Nope. Barely made a dent.”

“Well, come back after lunch if you want.”

“Thanks,” I say. “I will.” I could have kissed her.

Lunch with John is brief. Over crab cakes and iced tea, we reminisce about hiking in Jordan. John is gracious and attentive. I am distracted and rude. All I can think about is the cache of material still awaiting inspection.

By two p.m., I’m back upstairs, excavating the residue of a fraud that may or may not implicate my nemesis. Around two thirty p.m., I find a file of AmEx receipts for purchases made by the Cesar of San Francisco in his capacity as managing director of the Barclay Consulting Group. The charges confirm that the cardholder has ties to Switzerland—there’s an invoice for a weekend at the Dolder Grand hotel in Zurich ($18,598)—and that he likes Southeast Asian food. Those two details hardly constitute irrefutable proof of a link. Still, they’re circumstantially encouraging.

Around five p.m., bundled-up paralegals begin passing by the conference room. The workweek appears to be over. I hunt down Diane before she, too, heads home.

“How’d we make out?” she asks from a cubicle facing Goodman’s corner office.

“Not great. All that paper. It’s a bit overwhelming.”

“Welcome to my world.”

“I was hoping to schedule a time when I might come back.”

“Leaving already?”

“It’s past five, it’s Friday, and the city’s a mess. I figured everyone would be heading out.”

“Not everyone,” Diane says, nodding at the closed door across from her sentry post. “
Someone
has to hand in a big report on Monday. In fact,
someone,
and that someone’s assistant, will be working all weekend. You’re welcome to join us.”

Once more, I’m tempted to give her a kiss.

“Oh, and here, take these,” she adds. “Mark thought you might find them interesting.” Diane places two more bulging Redwelds on the parapet of her workstation.

I carry the files back to the conference room, plop into a chair, and
put my feet up on the table.
Two more days!
The extension comes as a huge relief. I call Françoise. “Just letting you know, I’ll be down here all weekend. I’ll sleep at my mom’s.”

“Find something?”

“No, but there’s still tons to go through.”

I anticipate a mild reproach, maybe something as subtle as a sigh.

“
Bon courage,
” she says. Her support catches me off guard, uplifts me, reminds me why I love my wife.

I skip dinner and leave the law firm sometime after nine none the wiser. The thundersnow has stopped, but the effects linger. Everything is white. The parked cars. The trash cans. The streets. The signs. Everything. As I walk west toward my mother’s place, I pass a man pulling his son on a sled. I follow the pair for half a block even though it’s out of my way. The scene, of son and father tethered to each other, hits me with a vague sense of longing.

Near Fifth Avenue, I manage to hail a cab. The ride crosstown is slow and silent. Snowdrifts muffle the din of the city. Sledders and cross-country skiers transform Central Park into a winter scene reminiscent of Villars. My wistfulness grows. I lower the cab window and breathe in the smell of fresh snow and for the first time in a long while, I think about my father. I miss him.

I sleep poorly that night. The uninspected cartons, the creaky Murphy bed in my mother’s study, and the beeping of snowplows make it impossible to nod off. I find myself checking the time on my cell phone, a gesture that recalls the sleepless nights in Belvedere before my father’s wristwatch disappeared.

By nine the next morning, I’m back at the law firm. Diane greets me at the guard station. In the elevator, she asks about my interest in the fraud. I tell her about Cesar.

“You were ten, and he did that to you? What a little shit!”

“No argument there.”

“And you think he’s one of the crooks who worked with the baron?”

“I’m not sure, but I think so.”

“Well,
I’m
sure,” she says.

“You sound like my son. He’s positive the two Cesars are the same guy.”

“Smart kid. You know what they say. What goes around comes around.”

I have two days to work through the rest of the discovery materials. The task is so daunting that I make a pledge to myself: If a document doesn’t concern Cesar, it won’t concern me.

By noon, I manage to polish off two cartons. No smoking gun. At this rate, I’ll be able to survey all the files before I have to catch the train back to Providence on Sunday. But around two o’clock, a folder full of black-and-white celebrity photographs slows my pace. “The [Badische] Chairman with his wife and Pope Paul during the bestowal of decorations at the Vatican,” reads one caption. “The Chairman and the Administrator presenting the President of Malta with a donation for the disabled children at the Presidential Palace,” reads another. “The executive committee director with British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill and General (later U.S. President) Eisenhower,” reads a third. Many of the photos feature Prince Robert tapping a ceremonial sword on the shoulders of movie stars: Anthony Quinn, Sammy Davis Jr., Liza Minnelli, Ernest Borgnine.

I’m hoping to find a picture of Cesar. No such luck. Soon after I force myself to set aside the photo file, I uncover another possible clue. It takes the form of a raised-letter carte de visite bearing the House of Badische coat of arms: a golden eagle with outstretched wings and a pair of lions standing on their hind legs, front paws raised as if ready to strike.

I’ve seen a crest just like it, but I can’t recall where.

With a growing sense of déjà vu, I reach for the Cesareum. It doesn’t take long to locate what I’m looking for. Eagle with outstretched wings? Check. Lion rampant with paws extended? Check. The heraldic symbols on the Badische calling card are uncannily similar to the ones on my Aiglon blazer patch. The correspondence suggests yet another. A crazy image pops into my head: Cesar sketching the Badische coat of arms with his Aiglon blazer close at hand.

I take a break to inform Goodman and Diane of the graphic connections.

“Case closed,” Diane says, delicately touching my tattered school patch as if it were the Shroud of Turin.

“Not so fast,” Goodman interjects. He asks if I have further proof.

I run through the rest of the corroborating evidence.

“That’s it?” he says. “Sounds like a stretch.”

His doubts don’t surprise me. He’s a lawyer. He’s paid to be skeptical. I return to the conference room and continue to dig. By midnight, I have worked through the last of the fourteen boxes. Seventy thousand documents and not one of them, not a damn one, provides the proof I’m looking for.

Did the Aiglon crest inspire the logo of the Badische Trust Consortium?

By the time I arrive at the law firm Sunday morning, Goodman and Diane are already at work, fine-tuning a seventeen-hundred-page report for a drug manufacturer fending off a multibillion-dollar class action suit. I say a quick hello before returning to the conference room. Documents blanket the full length of the table. It’s as if the Friday blizzard has moved inside.

Cesar, you son of a bitch, where are you?

Beleaguered by the mess, I barely have the energy to reach for the Redwelds Diane furnished late Friday. But hours before I’m scheduled to return home, while forcing myself to leaf through the supplemental index to a “Defendant’s Memorandum in Aid of Sentencing,” I come across a short declarative sentence that raises the hairs on the back of my neck: “Cesar A. Viana was born on April 24, 1958 in Manila, Philippines.”

Bingo! After unleashing a string of curses and completing a fist-pumping victory lap around the conference table, I call Françoise.

“Listen to this!” I read her the incriminating line.

“
Merde!
What else does it say?”

“That he’s upper-middle-class. That his mother ran the family business, the Realistic Beauty Institute, and that his father was an inventor.”