Whipping Boy (25 page)

“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 August
o
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?”

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quality design” and “classy writing instrument such as Mont Blanc”—items one and ten of the Badische dress code—have been replaced by a black paisley short-sleeve shirt and a Bic holstered in a pair of pleated Dockers.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.

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.”

“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.

•
  
Extradition request submitted, November 21, 2001. Sherry believed to be out of the country so Feeney files a “red notice” with the DC office of Interpol, confirming US Government will “pay the freight” associated with extradition.

•
  
Suspect arrested, November 28, 2001. Sherry’s name “pops up” at JFK during a screening of passengers coming off a BA flight from Hong Kong. Feeney goes to the airport, takes Sherry into custody, and delivers him to the main branch of the NYC post office, on Thirty-Fourth Street.

•
  
Suspects arraigned (mug shot profiles), November 30, 2001. Moncrieffe, Cesar, and another Badische liaison turn themselves in to authorities. (Prince Robert formally declared a fugitive.)

•
  
Luggage searched (PS Form 8164), December 11, 2001. Two weeks after Sherry’s arraignment, Feeney receives a warrant to inspect impounded luggage. Discovers “fancy cravats” along with “2 DVDs which purportedly contain recordings of the films ‘Young Guns’ and ‘Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace,’” and “3 DVDs which purportedly contain the computer games ‘M Gear,’ ‘Diablo,’ and ‘Tomb Raider Chronicles.’”

•
  
DVDs analyzed (PS Form 720), December 17, 2001. Encryption specialists assess if computer discs “contain what the discs purport to contain.” They do. “Basically the forensics guys got to watch movies and play
Diablo.”

After we go through his files, I ask Feeney if he has copies of the Badische mug shot profiles. “I’m eager to get my hands on Cesar’s arrest record.”

“I get that impression. But I can’t help you out. I’m sorry.”

I must do a pretty poor job hiding my frustration because, toward the end the meal, Feeney offers to make a few calls.

It turns out the postman
does
ring twice. Feeney gets back in touch a few days later with contact information for his former boss, a senior
postal inspector named John G. Feiter (“Yeah, it’s pronounced
Fighter
”).

Feiter, a trim gray-haired fraud specialist, is feeling nostalgic when I meet him and a colleague at the Church Street offices of the US Postal Inspection Service. “Ah, Feeney,” he says with a sigh. “He was Spock to my Captain Kirk.”

“And what a vocabulary the guy had!” marvels Thomas Boyle, Feiter’s new lieutenant. “Who the hell says ‘sub rosa’ or ‘venerable’?”

I show the two postal inspectors three pictures charting Cesar’s trajectory from twelve-year-old boarding school roommate (Belvedere house photo) to fictional bully (illustration of the Tank) to Bay Area film producer (snapshot of goateed fund-raiser holding bottle of beer).

“You’re telling us all three of these guys are your old roomie?”

“My old roomie and your con man.”

Feiter takes his time reviewing the images. “That’s one helluva story,” he says at last. “Sounds like you have this thing nailed.”

“Not really. I need to know if he’s dangerous.”

“Have you reached out to Quilty? Quilty was the point person on the investigation. He’d know a lot more than we do.”

“Quilty’s not all that interested in talking. But Feeney told me Cesar was booked by Postal. If I could look at his arrest record, I might get a better sense of what I’m up against.”