so.”
“Or maybe I—”
Goodman raises his hand like a cop halting traffic.
I snapped this picture an hour after I found proof that my roommate worked for the Badische Trust Consortium.
In the silence that follows, I find myself wondering once again why I’m so intent on looking through the trial documents. I know forcertain that Cesar is a crook. Isn’t that enough? Not by a long shot. The bank fraud that landed him in jail remains a total mystery. Ditto his role in the crime. The journalist in me can’t let go of the story. At least that’s what I tell myself.
“You really need to review all these documents?” Goodman asks after completing his examination.
“I really do.”
“Then we’ll just have to send you duplicates.”
“Excuse me?”
“Merry Christmas.”
I look over at Diane. She says nothing, but the smile stretching across her face betrays what she’s thinking: What goes around comes around. *
T EN T HOUSAND D OCUMENTS L OST IN THE M AIL
The night before the night before Christmas, I have dream in which the Badische files get lost en route to Providence. The mix-up compels me to return to the law firm, where a mailroom clerk informs me that my shipment has been dispatched to Bermuda. While he’s detailing the weight limits of parcels posted to US protectorates, the law firm is bombed, and I find myself plunging down a stairwell under a shower of construction debris.
I don’t need help unpacking the significance of the stairwell tumble. It seems pretty obvious that I have linked the fraud to memories of Aiglon, although the nature of the connection remains vague.
Christmas arrives. I make out like a bandit. Max has put a copy of How to Be a Villain in my stocking. Françoise has wrapped up a printer/scanner in anticipation of the care package I’m expecting from New York. My sister and brother-in-law present me with a first editionof Forty Years a Gambler, the late-nineteenth-century memoir of a notorious flimflam man named George H. Devol.
It’s a bit unnerving to receive so many gifts tied to a kid I haven’t seen since I was eleven, especially since they call attention to the undelivered gift I want most of all: the legal files from New York. I spend much of Christmas day moping about like an ungrateful brat.
On December 26, my sister and her husband, Max, and I drive to Vermont, for three days of skiing. (Françoise, a devotee of the desert, forgoes all winter sports.) Perfect conditions on the slopes improve my mood. When not skiing just a little faster than I’d like (in a futile effort to keep up with my daredevil son), I immerse myself in the hotel pool, after which I immerse myself in free nachos, after which I immerse myself in the ostentatious reflections of George H. Devol, who, the title page of his memoir proclaims, cheated at cards by the time he was eleven, stacked decks by fourteen, “bested soldiers on the Rio Grande during the Mexican War; won hundreds of thousands from paymasters, cotton buyers, defaulters, and thieves; fought more rough-and-tumble fights than any man in America; and was the most daring gambler in the world.”
{Illustration from the title page of Forty Years a Gambl er by George H. Devol, 1887}
This memoir of a riverboat cheat was one of the fraud-themed gifts I received for Christmas.
On the last day of the ski trip, while stuck with Max on a stalled chairlift, I feel my chest start to tingle. At first I assume it’s some midstation chili con carne asserting itself. Only when the tingle returns do I realize my cell phone isvibrating. I extract the device from the inner pocket of my parka—no easy matter when one is wearing mittens and holding ski poles—to check the incoming messages.
“They arrived!” I shout.
The pronoun needs no clarification. Max holds out a clenched glove, and we fist-bump while rocking back and forth twenty feet in the air.
That night we decide to eat at a steak joint halfway down the Killington access
“Or maybe I—”
Goodman raises his hand like a cop halting traffic.
I snapped this picture an hour after I found proof that my roommate worked for the Badische Trust Consortium.
In the silence that follows, I find myself wondering once again why I’m so intent on looking through the trial documents. I know forcertain that Cesar is a crook. Isn’t that enough? Not by a long shot. The bank fraud that landed him in jail remains a total mystery. Ditto his role in the crime. The journalist in me can’t let go of the story. At least that’s what I tell myself.
“You really need to review all these documents?” Goodman asks after completing his examination.
“I really do.”
“Then we’ll just have to send you duplicates.”
“Excuse me?”
“Merry Christmas.”
I look over at Diane. She says nothing, but the smile stretching across her face betrays what she’s thinking: What goes around comes around. *
T EN T HOUSAND D OCUMENTS L OST IN THE M AIL
The night before the night before Christmas, I have dream in which the Badische files get lost en route to Providence. The mix-up compels me to return to the law firm, where a mailroom clerk informs me that my shipment has been dispatched to Bermuda. While he’s detailing the weight limits of parcels posted to US protectorates, the law firm is bombed, and I find myself plunging down a stairwell under a shower of construction debris.
I don’t need help unpacking the significance of the stairwell tumble. It seems pretty obvious that I have linked the fraud to memories of Aiglon, although the nature of the connection remains vague.
Christmas arrives. I make out like a bandit. Max has put a copy of How to Be a Villain in my stocking. Françoise has wrapped up a printer/scanner in anticipation of the care package I’m expecting from New York. My sister and brother-in-law present me with a first editionof Forty Years a Gambler, the late-nineteenth-century memoir of a notorious flimflam man named George H. Devol.
It’s a bit unnerving to receive so many gifts tied to a kid I haven’t seen since I was eleven, especially since they call attention to the undelivered gift I want most of all: the legal files from New York. I spend much of Christmas day moping about like an ungrateful brat.
On December 26, my sister and her husband, Max, and I drive to Vermont, for three days of skiing. (Françoise, a devotee of the desert, forgoes all winter sports.) Perfect conditions on the slopes improve my mood. When not skiing just a little faster than I’d like (in a futile effort to keep up with my daredevil son), I immerse myself in the hotel pool, after which I immerse myself in free nachos, after which I immerse myself in the ostentatious reflections of George H. Devol, who, the title page of his memoir proclaims, cheated at cards by the time he was eleven, stacked decks by fourteen, “bested soldiers on the Rio Grande during the Mexican War; won hundreds of thousands from paymasters, cotton buyers, defaulters, and thieves; fought more rough-and-tumble fights than any man in America; and was the most daring gambler in the world.”
{Illustration from the title page of Forty Years a Gambl er by George H. Devol, 1887}
This memoir of a riverboat cheat was one of the fraud-themed gifts I received for Christmas.
On the last day of the ski trip, while stuck with Max on a stalled chairlift, I feel my chest start to tingle. At first I assume it’s some midstation chili con carne asserting itself. Only when the tingle returns do I realize my cell phone isvibrating. I extract the device from the inner pocket of my parka—no easy matter when one is wearing mittens and holding ski poles—to check the incoming messages.
“They arrived!” I shout.
The pronoun needs no clarification. Max holds out a clenched glove, and we fist-bump while rocking back and forth twenty feet in the air.
That night we decide to eat at a steak joint halfway down the Killington access
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