Whipping Boy (31 page)

“Paul’s not in the picture,” I say. “It must have been taken after he left and before you got sick.” I take a deep breath. “Remember how Paul swiped my father’s watch?”

Cesar doesn’t respond, at least not directly. “I remember him being pretty harmless.”

“Paul? Harmless? That’s not my memory. I lived in fear of the guy.”
And what you made him do.
“Remember how he helped tie me to the bed to reenact
Jesus Christ Superstar
?”

“I think everybody picked on somebody,” Cesar says flatly.

I mention getting whipped to the sound track of “The Thirty-Nine Lashes.”

Cesar doesn’t respond.

Not for the first or last time, I’m faced with a choice: attack or retreat. And not for the first or last time, I choose the coward’s course of action, diverting the discussion into a thicket of meaningless detail. “The music was played on Timothy Kann’s tape recorder,” I say. “A portable Philips about yay big.” I spread my hands a foot apart.

Cesar doesn’t recall the whipping, the interlude, or the tape recorder. He doesn’t even recall Timothy Kann.

The last lapse is especially curious. How can someone who knows his boarding school laundry-tag number forget the name of a roommate? I give him a
few prompts. “New York kid. Father worked for Bache and Co. Liked Broadway musicals. Neat freak. Had a fancy electric toothbrush.”

{Courtesy of Mugshots.com}

Cesar’s sidekick in 2004. His profile, as an adult, is exactly as I remember it at school.

“Like I said,” Cesar says, “there’s a lot I don’t remember. I got an email from a Turkish kid in Belvedere. I have no recollection of him either.” (I never knew the Turkish kid. He arrived at the school a few months after I left. But his views of Cesar surfaced on a Facebook alumni page: “Don’t you remember me?” he asked my former roommate in the public forum. “You composed a jingle about how I picked my dick every day?” I contacted the alum and we exchanged five or six emails that corroborated many of my memories. “Yes, Cesar was a problem to all those not as big as he was,” he wrote. “But he made sure to stay away from me after seeing me take down another bully within hours of my arrival at school. Since first grade I’ve never taken crap from anybody.”)

I ask Cesar to name the boys he roomed with during his time at Aiglon. He mentions six or seven.

“You missed one,” I say.

“Who?”

“Um. I roomed with you, too.”

“Really?” Cesar gives me a doubtful look.

“There were five of us living together.”

He still appears skeptical.

“In a room at the top of Belvedere.”

“That’s right,” he says at last. “And people would pick on you, right?”

People?
I let it go. No, that’s not right. I’m not letting anything go. I’m keeping everything bottled up—to prolong the conversation and to keep myself in check.

“Are you in this?” Cesar asks, tapping the house photo.

At first, I think he’s joking. He has correctly identified nearly every boy in the picture. His failing to find me is like Professor Moriarty failing to recognize Holmes. But when he repeats the question, I
know he’s serious. I point to the sad-looking, mop-topped, cross-legged eleven-year-old at the base of the pyramid.

“That’s you?” Cesar says, shaking his head.

“That’s me.”

“Man, you were little.”

“I was,” I say with a sigh. “I was the littlest kid in the school.”

Is it really possible that a boy I will never forget has all but forgotten me? I believe it is. I’m pretty sure Cesar isn’t lying. Not about the photo, anyway. After all, if he were up to his old tricks, he’d pick me out of the lineup, recall the happy times we shared, then attempt to rope me into one of his schemes. He doesn’t do any of that.

I feel foolish for so grossly exaggerating his capacity for evil. Cesar is not the All-Knowing Menace I anticipated. Truth be told, if anyone deserves that title, I do. Far from resisting my questions, he welcomes them, even going so far as to suggest that we meet again before I fly home.

At our next get-together, I continue to lob softballs. My approach resembles the Gradual-Length Method developed by Monsieur Stump, our ski instructor at Aiglon. Monsieur Stump always started beginners on short skis that were easy to maneuver. Only as our confidence grew would he introduce longer skis. He recognized the value of incremental challenge. By the same logic, I guide Cesar over unthreatening terrain. No talk of felony or flogging. No further mention of stolen watches.

At a certain point, Cesar tells me he’s writing a screenplay.

“What’s it about?” I ask.

“It’s about these two people, and they’re both living a lie.”

“Both living a lie?”

Cesar nods. “He’s a construction worker posing as a wealthy banker. She’s a shampoo assistant in a beauty salon posing as a famous movie actress. When they meet each other, they’re pretending to be people they’re not. They get to know each other really well and fall for each other. But what will they do when they find out who each one really is?”

That’s an excellent question, one I’m starting to ask myself. “How did you come up with the idea?”

“It’s basically about the relationship between me and my wife—just exaggerated to the max. There’s a certain formula that seems to work in Hollywood. I’m trying to stick to part of that formula, but I’m also trying to break away from it. Add some cachet. Towards the end, I want to have a little twist or something.”

“Everyone loves a little twist at the end,” I say. “What are you calling it?”

“
Parallel Lives
.”

“That’s a good title. I read an essay collection called
Parallel Lives
a while back.”

“No, not
lives,
” Cesar corrects. “
Lies
. Parallel
lies
.”

“Wow. That’s even better.”

“Thanks.”

“
Parallel Lies,
” I repeat. “That’s
really
good. Just be careful someone doesn’t swipe it.”

During our second exchange, Cesar brings up his expertise in something called NLP. “It stands for neurolinguistic programming. It’s a very interesting way to break out of certain patterns or blockages. Athletes use it. NLP allows you to reframe your thoughts—to have total control. Basically, it teaches you that all behavior is positively intended.”

“Really?”

“Really. People always intend to do things for positive reasons. Even Hitler. Hitler’s intentions were positive. They just didn’t match his outcomes.”

“You’re saying
Hitler
was a do-gooder?”

“In his own mind, yes.” Sensing my skepticism, Cesar hedges. “Probably not a good example. NLP is pretty complicated.”

And also controversial. Wikipedia cross-references it to crop circles, crystal healing, dowsing, and urine therapy. Less neutral sources invoke brainwashing.

NLP, I soon discover, is just one of the many self-improvement tools Cesar uses to tap his “core reality” on behalf of the executives he tells me that he coaches. “I use a little bit of this and a little bit of that.”

“What specifically?”

Cesar mentions qigong breathing, tai chi, brain wave therapy, biofeedback, and Buddhist meditation, relational public speaking (“to get grounded, to get connected”), EST, an EST offshoot called Landmark (“Human behavior is governed by a need to look good”), and a program known as Family Constellations, which teaches its practitioners that “there is no ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ when it comes to past transgressions”—a lesson that seems tailor-made for a felon who believes he’s been unfairly prosecuted.

Cesar attributes his personal growth and professional success to many masters, but he privileges the insights of Tony Robbins, the square-jawed “leadership psychologist,” above all others. (“Forget your past,” Robbins advocates. “Don’t think about who you have been. Who are you
now
?”) Cesar tells me he has attended numerous Robbins events and owns a complete set of the speaker’s motivational tapes. He has even uploaded, onto his consulting website, a photograph of his personal (Robbins-inspired) “vision board”—an aspirational collage composed of, among other things, a beachfront Mediterranean-style home, an Aston Martin convertible, and a snapshot of Cesar posing in front of Machu Picchu. “I look at the board every day and tell myself, ‘That’s where I want to go. That’s where I will be. That’s where I already am.’”

“Already? How has the vision board already helped you?”

“Okay, here’s an example,” Cesar says. “About ten days ago, I cut Tony Robbins’s head off.”

“Excuse me?”

“I cut off Tony Robbins’s head,” he repeats. “I found this picture in a magazine of Tony giving a presentation at Carnegie Hall. There must have been five thousand people in the audience.” I’m pretty sure he means Radio City Music Hall. “So I cut his face out and taped my head on top of Tony’s body. Okay, now here’s the freaky part.” I’m thinking we’re well past the freaky part. “I cut off his head ten days ago, right? And so what happens yesterday? I’m unexpectedly asked up onstage at a conference to help
run
a leadership class.”

Cesar acknowledges that the turnout at his event was smaller than at Tony’s. (Twelve entrepreneurs attending a free seminar on “The Best Kept Secrets of Modern Day Heroes and Leaders” in the breakout room of an airport hotel.) But that does nothing to diminish his zeal. “Visualization is a
very
powerful tool,” he declares. “Don’t question how the subconscious brings about your goals. It doesn’t matter how. Besides, it’s beyond our conscious comprehension.”

“Killing Me Softly with His Song” wafts over the café’s sound system while he’s telling me all this. The bluesy lament does a fine job capturing my reaction to his life lessons, but doesn’t help me to visualize how I’m going to get him to open up about Badische.

My first ploy is to introduce the topic of aristocrats, hoping that might prompt Cesar to mention his own royal connections. I scroll through my phone and pull up three pictures of Aiglon alums bearing noble pedigrees: Prince Leka of Albania, Princess Marsi Paribatra of Siam, and His Highness Muhammad Jahangir Khanji, the Nawab of Junagadh. When that fails to provoke the intended reaction, I reminisce about a Belvedere housemate who comes from a long line of Florentine nobles. But all that gets me is a long tirade about the Italian aristocrat’s unwillingness “to explore various international IPAs” (income-producing activities) Cesar is trying to put together.

Once I’ve used up my royal bait, I chum the waters with a tale of wrongful imprisonment. “Do you know about the current headmaster?” I ask.

{Keystone/Getty Images (
left
), Courtesy of the Marsi Foundation (
cente
r)}

Aiglon’s aristocratic alums have included Prince Leka of Albania, Princess Marsi Paribatra of Siam, and His Highness Muhammad Jahangir Khanji, the Nawab of Junagadh.

“What about him?”

“In 2000—this is while the guy was headmaster the first time—he was jailed.”

“Why?”

“His wife falsely accused him of molesting one of their sons. It took him two years,
two whole years,
to get the charges dropped. Can you imagine what that must have been like? But the most incredible thing is that the school rehired him despite the scandal. Talk about redemption! Extraordinary how he bounced back, don’t you think?”

Again, Cesar refuses to be drawn in.

“Have you ever revisited the school?” I ask.

“Never.”

“What about Switzerland?”

“Never.”

“No?”

“No,” he repeats. Then he corrects himself. “Wait. Sorry, I’ve been to Zurich. I went there for meetings.”

At last, a nibble. “Oh?”

“I was doing partner financing back in ’99 and 2000.”

I nod, trying to appear interested, but not too interested.

“A couple times a year, I’d go to New York and Switzerland to meet with this lending group headed up by a prince.”

“A prince? That sounds fancy.” I resist the impulse to say more. Cesar eventually begins to open up.

“What happened was the group would lend money to people. But in order to borrow, you had to put up a bank guaranty. And there ended up being a lawsuit because they were signing contracts to lend money, but they didn’t have money in their account to lend it. They were going to syndicate the funds from various sources. Anyway, it became a big stink, which they’re saying was a fraud, which I don’t believe. It wasn’t a fraud, but they’re saying it was a fraud, and I didn’t make any money on it.”