to the Court. See letter annexed hereto as Exhibit C.
I flip to Exhibit C, the letter from Cesar’s sister, and read part of that submission to Françoise as well:
Cesar’s school, Aiglon, was a mountain away from my school, and essentially he was all on his own through puberty. I imagine he must have been quite lonely, and this and the lack of a male parental role model made him unusually susceptible to peer pressure from his male classmates . . . he would go to great lengths to have his schoolmates like him, doing their work for them, despite my phone calls to him to be his own person.
This was a pattern that I believe caused his present difficulties and if he has one fault it has been to not possess a proper sense of discrimination. . . . In his desire to belong to this present group of people with whom he was charged he showed poor judgment and I believe they took advantage of him. To my knowledge, in the over 40 years I have known him, Cesar has never knowingly taken advantage of any individual, although he suffered many incidents of being on the receiving end of abuse.
“ C’est pas possible! She’s saying he’s the victim?”
“Yup, that’s exactly what she’s saying.”
Françoise’s shock pales in comparison to mine. The bizarre professional overlap between our fathers—that they were both inventors—is mildly annoying. Far worse is the suggestion that Cesar is a blameless casualty of the boarding school that brought us together. But the detail that really kneecaps me, the thing that hits way tooclose to home, is that all of Cesar’s problems are tied to the absence of his father. Join the club, buddy.
With time to kill before heading to Penn Station, I gather together the most compelling discovery documents and arrange them in nine discrete piles: SWINDLERS , VICTIMS , BADISCHE BANK DOCS , LAWYERS , KNIGHTS OF MALTA , TRANSCRIPT , CELEBS , and (the biggest pile) CESAR / BARCLAY . Then I take a few pictures of the reconstructed ziggurat before dialing Diane’s extension to say that I’m done with the files, at least for now.
“Mark wants to know if you found your smoking gun,” she says.
“I did.”
“We’ll be right over.”
A few minutes later, the pair enters the conference room to review the newly uncovered evidence. I show them the relevant sections of the sentencing memo.
“See, I told you,” Diane tells her boss. “What goes around comes around.”
Goodman leafs through the brief. “This is more convincing,” he acknowledges.
I could have ended my search there and then. After all, I had proved, beyond all reasonable doubt, that “my” Cesar was a convicted felon. Yet the notion of wrapping things up never occurred to me. Over the course of the weekend the focus of my obsession had broadened to include the fraud that had put my ex-roommate behind bars. The completionist in me needed to know a little more about the Badische Trust Consortium. No, that’s not accurate. The completionist in me needed to know everything about the Badische Trust Consortium.
Which explains why I turn to Goodman and Diane and say, “I’m hoping I can come back and review some of these files more closely.”
Diane frowns. “Does that sound convenient, Mark?”
“During the holidays?” Goodman shakes his head. “ Way too much of a hassle.”
Their rebuff unsettles me. What if I can’t return to the firm? Overthe last three days, documents have been passing through my hands like envelopes through an optical mail sorter. There’s no way I’ll remember what I’ve looked at.
“Is that the stuff you’re hoping to go through?” Goodman asks, motioning to the nine stacks of paper.
“That, plus the trial transcript and some briefs.”
Goodman thumbs through the documents, pausing occasionally to pull an item. He says nothing as he conducts his review.
“I could come back at the beginning of the year,” I say, doing my best not to sound desperate.
“No, I don’t think
I flip to Exhibit C, the letter from Cesar’s sister, and read part of that submission to Françoise as well:
Cesar’s school, Aiglon, was a mountain away from my school, and essentially he was all on his own through puberty. I imagine he must have been quite lonely, and this and the lack of a male parental role model made him unusually susceptible to peer pressure from his male classmates . . . he would go to great lengths to have his schoolmates like him, doing their work for them, despite my phone calls to him to be his own person.
This was a pattern that I believe caused his present difficulties and if he has one fault it has been to not possess a proper sense of discrimination. . . . In his desire to belong to this present group of people with whom he was charged he showed poor judgment and I believe they took advantage of him. To my knowledge, in the over 40 years I have known him, Cesar has never knowingly taken advantage of any individual, although he suffered many incidents of being on the receiving end of abuse.
“ C’est pas possible! She’s saying he’s the victim?”
“Yup, that’s exactly what she’s saying.”
Françoise’s shock pales in comparison to mine. The bizarre professional overlap between our fathers—that they were both inventors—is mildly annoying. Far worse is the suggestion that Cesar is a blameless casualty of the boarding school that brought us together. But the detail that really kneecaps me, the thing that hits way tooclose to home, is that all of Cesar’s problems are tied to the absence of his father. Join the club, buddy.
With time to kill before heading to Penn Station, I gather together the most compelling discovery documents and arrange them in nine discrete piles: SWINDLERS , VICTIMS , BADISCHE BANK DOCS , LAWYERS , KNIGHTS OF MALTA , TRANSCRIPT , CELEBS , and (the biggest pile) CESAR / BARCLAY . Then I take a few pictures of the reconstructed ziggurat before dialing Diane’s extension to say that I’m done with the files, at least for now.
“Mark wants to know if you found your smoking gun,” she says.
“I did.”
“We’ll be right over.”
A few minutes later, the pair enters the conference room to review the newly uncovered evidence. I show them the relevant sections of the sentencing memo.
“See, I told you,” Diane tells her boss. “What goes around comes around.”
Goodman leafs through the brief. “This is more convincing,” he acknowledges.
I could have ended my search there and then. After all, I had proved, beyond all reasonable doubt, that “my” Cesar was a convicted felon. Yet the notion of wrapping things up never occurred to me. Over the course of the weekend the focus of my obsession had broadened to include the fraud that had put my ex-roommate behind bars. The completionist in me needed to know a little more about the Badische Trust Consortium. No, that’s not accurate. The completionist in me needed to know everything about the Badische Trust Consortium.
Which explains why I turn to Goodman and Diane and say, “I’m hoping I can come back and review some of these files more closely.”
Diane frowns. “Does that sound convenient, Mark?”
“During the holidays?” Goodman shakes his head. “ Way too much of a hassle.”
Their rebuff unsettles me. What if I can’t return to the firm? Overthe last three days, documents have been passing through my hands like envelopes through an optical mail sorter. There’s no way I’ll remember what I’ve looked at.
“Is that the stuff you’re hoping to go through?” Goodman asks, motioning to the nine stacks of paper.
“That, plus the trial transcript and some briefs.”
Goodman thumbs through the documents, pausing occasionally to pull an item. He says nothing as he conducts his review.
“I could come back at the beginning of the year,” I say, doing my best not to sound desperate.
“No, I don’t think
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