Whipping Boy (24 page)

{Courtesy of Yosh Morimoto}

Yosh Morimoto.

Cesar and Colonel Sherry assured him that he was
exactly
the kind of person the Trust targeted.

When Morimoto asked how his loan would be bankrolled, the colonel showed him a flowchart that traced the movement of funds from the anonymous investors in Europe and Africa, to the offshore trusts established by Barclay, to the project he wished to finance.

Morimoto couldn’t make heads or tails out of all the boxes and arrows, but the bottom line was this: thanks to Cesar, the Trust appeared willing to loan him $30 million.

The New York meetings concluded with a dinner at Benihana, the Japanese restaurant chain noted for the showmanship of its knife-wielding chefs. Toward the end of the meal, Morimoto was again dazzled when Prince Robert introduced him to Rocky Aoki, the chain’s
flamboyant founder and (though less widely known) “Ambassador to the Empire of Japan” for the Knights of Malta (Ecumenical), a diplomatic honor the prince bestowed in his capacity as founder and self-appointed grand master of the for-profit chivalric order.

“With
those
kind of contacts, I figured these guys
had
to be the real thing.”

A flowchart Colonel Sherry dashed off to clarify the Trust’s funding sources.

Morimoto’s confidence took a hit when he learned that his loan would require three offshore trusts costing “nine thousand dollars a pop.” Like other Barclay clients, he tried to avoid the supersized fees by using his own lawyer. The colonel nixed that idea. “He said it would complicate matters. He said the Trust had its procedures, used for generations, and that Cesar, their intermediary, was well acquainted with them.”

In the weeks that followed, Morimoto gave Barclay $27,000 to form the obligatory shell corporations and another $210,000 in advance fees that the Trust called “performance guaranties.” In return, Morimoto received an “irrevocable funding commitment” and a secret transaction code that was supposed to release the $30 million required to break ground in Belize.

“The only other thing I needed was the bank letter,” Morimoto tells me. “But the guys rejected every bank I wanted to use. I went to the Bahamas, Germany, Switzerland, the Canary Islands. Then to Guangzhou in China, back to Switzerland, and to New York a bunch of times. What could I do? Once you get into it, you’ve got to make a decision. Either you bail or keep getting sucked in. And I kept getting sucked in and sucked in. I couldn’t believe I got involved in such crap.
I was totally embarrassed. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know where to turn.”

Morimoto kept missing deadlines, and with each holdup he was compelled to dig deeper into his pocket. “Every delay cost five or ten grand.” By the time he received his “failure to perform” notice, Morimoto had blown through $500,000. Roughly half went to Badische and Barclay. The rest was spent on travel and legal costs.

“Man oh man, did they do a number on me,” he says, again shaking his head.

“What was it like working with Cesar?” I ask.

“He didn’t leave much of an impression. He was very noncommittal after he got his money.”

“Do you remember his nationality?”

“I think he might have been Filipino, but I’m not really sure.”

“Did you consider him dangerous?”

Morimoto ponders the question for a moment. “Like I said, he didn’t leave much of an impression.”

Before leaving Providence, I promised Françoise I’d bring backup to the fund-raiser. That pledge turned out to be difficult to satisfy. Unlike Richard Mamarella, I lacked ready access to professional muscle, and I couldn’t see hiring someone to watch me watch my former roommate. In the end, I asked my cousin Ruth MacKay, a lifelong Bay Area local, to join me. She said sure.

Ruth rings my hotel room from the front desk two hours before the event. “Your bodyguard is here.”

Measuring five foot two in sensible shoes, Ruth will never be mistaken for, say, T-Ray, Richard Mamarella’s fridge-size sidekick. But with two decades of newspaper experience in and around San
Francisco, Ruth is more of an asset than any muscle-bound rent-a-cop.
*

“What are your thoughts about getting a drink?” I ask when we meet in the lobby.

“I’m part Scot,” she says. “Take a guess.”

At the hotel bar, I provide a two-whiskey synopsis of the search.

“Sounds like you have a pretty good grasp on the contours of the con, but what do you have on Cesar?”

“Three years of his subpoenaed bank and credit card records. I know where he buys his clothes and where he gets them cleaned. I know what brand of bottled water he drinks and where he purchases his booze—a liquor store called Jugs. I can tell you where he pumps iron, where he pumps gas, where he does his banking, where he pays for massages, and where he eats. The convicted shill for the International House of Badische is a regular at the International House of Pancakes.”

“That’s all great,” says Ruth. “But do you know what makes him tick?”

“Not really,” I admit. “That’s one of the reasons I flew out here. The files are full of contradictions.”

“Such as?”

“I don’t know if he’s rich or poor. He filed for bankruptcy three weeks before he started serving time but he owns a late-model BMW that retails for $63,000.”

“And you know that how?”

“A web bot. He’s trying to sell the Beemer on Craigslist.”

“Is it possible you’re digging too deeply?” Ruth asks.

“More than possible. It’s a total certainty. I can’t help it. I’ve always been held hostage by my interests. The problem is the more
I find out, the less I know. I’m hoping that
seeing
Cesar will clear up some of the confusion.”

“Tell me about tonight.”

“Cesar’s raising money for an indie flick about a photographer who goes missing in Chile during the Pinochet regime.”

“Is the event legit?”

“No idea.” I pull out the downloaded Evite and quote from the pitch. “‘Join us on a journey back to childhood,’” I intone, “a story ‘about real memories repressed for twenty years. . . . A pursuit of truth to bring peace to a tortured soul.’”

“Sounds like the film’s about you, Allen.”

“I’m not sure about the repressed memories part, but I suspect my tortured soul won’t find peace until I learn more about Cesar. I don’t even know his nationality.”

“I thought he’s Filipino.”

“That’s what he told us at school, and that’s what he’s told some clients. But his lawyer claims he’s American.”

“He could be both,” Ruth notes.

“Of course. Except the files indicate the INS couldn’t verify his citizenship status while the investigation was under way. And just to complicate things further, he petitioned the Bureau of Prisons to have his ethnicity changed from white to Hispanic.”

“Any photos?”

I show Ruth the Belvedere house portrait from 1972.

“Anything more recent?”

“Nope. Last time I checked, his online bios all had ‘Image Not Available’ and ‘No photo’ graphics. The website for the film company includes head shots for every staffer
except
Cesar. He’s represented by a JPEG of a movie clapper.”

“How about yearbook pictures?”

“I contacted two universities he attended. Struck out at both.”

Ruth sips her Scotch and ruminates. “So we’re unsure of his
nationality or his ethnicity. We don’t know whether he’s rich or poor, and we have no clue what he looks like.”

Four head shots that accompanied Cesar’s early postpenitentiary web bios.

“Yup. Oh, and there’s one more unknown. He might be dangerous.”

Ruth puts down her drink. “Dangerous?”

“He’s connected to some pretty nasty characters.”

“‘Connected’ as in
The Godfather
connected?”

“It’s possible. The record indicates he received legal advice from a Gambino associate.”

“Anything else I need to know?”

“Just that I won’t be using my real name tonight. Refer to me as Isaac Raven.”

“Isaac Raven?”

“It’s something I cooked up with Max and a drinking buddy.
Isaac Raven
is Cesar’s first and last name, but with the letters rearranged.”

“Why not scramble your own name?”

“We tried. I couldn’t see going undercover as Ezra I. Lunkwell. On the other hand, Cesar’s name is an anagrammatical gold mine.”
*

“Fitting for a guy who’s constantly reinventing himself,” Ruth observes.

“Plus Isaac Raven sounds dark and brooding.”

Ruth gives a nod. “And it goes well with that ridiculous beard.”

“I’m shaving it off after the party. Françoise’s orders.”

“That’s a relief,” Ruth says. And raising her tumbler, she makes a toast. “To Isaac Raven.”

Our nerves calmed by the genial influences of expense-account whiskey, Ruth and I catch a cab to Cesar’s fund-raiser, which is taking place at a Mission District college that grants advanced degrees in political activism and women’s spirituality. We arrive at the venue just as a band of South American musicians is unloading a panel truck.

“Oh Christ,” says Ruth. “Tambourines.”

I ask the percussionist if Cesar has arrived. He shakes his head and points to the event’s cohost, a Latina filmmaker in her early forties.

“Welcome,” she says. “What are your names, please?”

Ruth says, “Ruth.”

The cohost turns to me. “And you are . . . ?”

“I am . . .”

“Yes?”

“I am . . .”

I know what I’m
supposed
to say. I’m supposed to say, “Hi, I’m Isaac Raven.” But I can’t. I can’t make myself lie, at least not explicitly. Eventually I mumble, “Al.”

“Sorry?”

“Al,” I repeat.

“
Hola,
Al,” the cohost says. “You and Ruth should get yourselves drinks.”

Once we’re safely beyond the checkpoint, my cousin gives me a poke. “So what happened,
Isaac
?”

“Guess I’m not cut out for fraud.”

“That’s pretty obvious. But you do know what I have to say now, don’t you?”

“What?”

“‘Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”’”

The setting for the fund-raiser, a gallery space scarred by years of vegetarian potlucks, craft fairs, and cooperative art shows, is worlds away from the five-star suites into which Cesar once lured clients. There are no international financiers in matching silk ties raising flutes of vintage champagne. Mostly it’s hipsters in bandannas holding red plastic cups of Two-Buck Chuck.

Ruth and I grab a couple of drinks at the cash bar, then separate. I strike up a conversation with a self-described radical vegan ecofeminist who teaches yoga and, in his spare time, promotes nonviolence toward animals (“both human and nonhuman”). I ask if he knows Cesar. He does not. My next two informants aren’t much help either. They make vague references to the host’s “real estate deals” and “a life-coaching thing.” Eventually I approach a frail woman seated behind a card table.

“I’m the mother of the producer,” she informs me proudly.

It takes a moment to figure out the implications of the claim. “Cesar’s your son?” I blurt out.

“How do you know my Cesar?”

“From . . .”—I’m about to say “Aiglon” but stop before I blow my cover—“from the Evite,” I improvise. Totally unprepared, and more than a little ambivalent about interviewing an elderly woman under false pretenses regarding the behavior of her felonious son, I bumble my way through the impromptu exchange that reveals, among other things, that Cesar calls his mother every day, that he takes her for long walks and occasional vacations (to Mexico, most recently), that he drives her to the supermarket, to the cemetery “to visit relatives,” to the dentist, and to her doctors. When I ask the kindly woman about her son’s nationality, I’m told that he is “half Venezuelan, half Asian, half Latino, and half Filipino American,” which, in a way, makes sense since nothing about Cesar adds up.

I ask about his childhood, hoping to provoke some comments about Aiglon. But my unsuspecting source scrolls back further than I’d like
and tells me in considerable detail how she gave birth to her only son in the Manila beauty school owned by her family.